What did Galileo gaIiIei see when he turned the first telescope to the Sun?

   In the year 1611, Galileo, with the aid of his telescope, (picture, below) discovered that there were dark spots upon the Sun, and that those spots moved across the surface of the Sun from day to day. This was a very interesting and important discovery. though 'had terrible consequences tor Galileo. There was nothing to be found  about sun-spols in the writings at the great Greek thinker Aristotle,  I and so the people who were powerful In the time oi Galileo said  that what he called sun-spots were due to faults in his telescope or  in his eyes. 

    Worse than this, the discovery of sunspots was regarded as an insult to the Sun, as implying that he was not perfect, and therefore was a wicked thing to assert the existence of. But since the time of Galileo we have learnt to regard sun-spots as among the most interesting lhings in the Sun. When lafge ones are present, anyone can see them for himself by looking at the Sun through a smoked glass.If we watch them from day to day, we find, as Galileo himself found, nearly three hundred years ago, thaI ihey very often travel right across the face of the Sun, hom side to side. then disappear. and then appear again on the other side.   We notice also that as they reach the side of the Sun the-I seem to get narrower, as if we were looking at them sideways. This can only mean that the Sun splns round upon itself, and we now know that he takes rather more than twenty-five of our days to do this- lhat is to say, that while the Sun spins round once, the Earth spins round more than twenty-five times. The Earth's spinning makes day and night for us, but of course, it makes no difference to the brightness of any part of the Sun, which is the source of our day