---
title: "Patronage in astronomy"
chunk: 4/4
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage_in_astronomy"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:37:06.257744+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

[H]e saw the telescope more as an instrument of patronage than as an instrument of astronomy. When Galileo, having seized what the moon and stars could quickly offer, had turned his telescope on the next brightest object in the evening sky, Jupiter, early in January, Venus was visible in the predawn sky. For a Copernican, Venus was in a critical part of its orbit, past maximum elongation, approaching superior conjunction, and thus exhibiting a shape incompatible with the Ptolemaic system. As we have seen, however, Jupiter had offered something quite different, an incomparable present to the grand duke, and Galileo had not paused to look further.

Westfall questions Galileo's commitment to Copernicanism, and instead views Galileo as being more concerned with finding discoveries that could help further his patronage relationship, and that Galileo was prepared to try to monopolize the telescope in order to do so.

== See also ==
History of Science
History of Astronomy
Age of Enlightenment
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Affair
Johannes Kepler
Tycho Brahe
Nicolaus Copernicus

== Notes ==

== References ==
Barker, Peter, and Bernard R. Goldstein. "Patronage and the Production of De Revolutionibus." Journal for the History of Astronomy (ISSN 0021-8286), Vol. 34, Part 4, No. 117, p. 345-368 (2003)
Biagioli, Mario. Galileo Courtier: the Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism, University of Chicago Press, 1993. ISBN 0-226-04560-9
Jardine, Nicholas. "The Places of Astronomy in Early-Modern Culture." Journal for the History of Astronomy Vol. 29, p. 49-62 (1998)
McCarthy, Martin F. "Galileo Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism." Theological Studies, September, 1994. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6404/is_n3_v55/ai_n28643111/?tag=content;col1
Smith, Robert. "Early history space astronomy: Issues of patronage, management and control." Experimental Astronomy (ISSN 1572-9508), Vol. 26, No. 1-3, p. 149-161 (2009)
Westfall, Richard. "Science and Patronage: Galileo and the Telescope" Isis, Vol. 76, No. 1, p. 11-30 (1985)
Wolff, Larry. "Galileo Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism. -book reviews" Journal of Social History, Winter, 1994. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2005/is_n2_v28/ai_16351127/