First telescope views of the sky

The telescope appeared in the early 17th century. English astronomer Thomas Harriot left an early dated lunar drawing from 1609 after observing the Moon through a telescope—several months before Galileo turned his telescope toward it. Galileo became famous for the first widely known systematic telescopic observations and published them in *Sidereus Nuncius* in 1610; calling him without qualification the first person ever to look at the sky through a telescope is inaccurate.