The 

Galileo affair (Italian: il processo a Galileo Galilei) began around 1610[1] and culminated with the
trial and condemnation of Galileo Galilei by the Roman Catholic Inquisition in 1633. Galileo was
prosecuted for his support of heliocentrism, the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets
revolve around the Sun at the centre of the universe.
In 1610, Galileo published his Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger), describing the observations that
he had made with his new, much stronger telescope, amongst them, the Galilean moons of Jupiter.
With these observations and additional observations that followed, such as the phases of Venus, he
promoted the heliocentric theory of Nicolaus Copernicus published in De revolutionibus orbium
coelestium in 1543. Galileo's discoveries were met with opposition within the Catholic Church, and in
1616 the Inquisition declared heliocentrism to be "formally heretical". Galileo went on to propose a
theory of tides in 1616, and of comets in 1619; he argued that the tides were evidence for the motion
of the Earth.
In 1632 Galileo published his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which defended
heliocentrism, and was immensely popular. Responding to mounting controversy
over theology, astronomy and philosophy, the Roman Inquisition tried Galileo in 1633, found him
"vehemently suspect of heresy", and sentenced him to house arrest where he remained until his
death in 1642.[2] At that point, heliocentric books were banned and Galileo was ordered to abstain
from holding, teaching or defending heliocentric ideas after the trial.[3]
The affair was complex since very early on Pope Urban VIII had been a patron to Galileo and had
given him permission to publish on the Copernican theory as long as he treated it as a hypothesis,
but after the publication in 1632, the patronage was broken off due to numerous reasons.[4] Historians
of science have corrected numerous false interpretations of the affair.[2][5][6][7]

Initial controversies

Photomontage of the moons of Jupiter, named after Galileo. Galileo viewed these moons as a smaller
Copernican system within the Solar System and used them to support heliocentrism.
In 1610 Galileo Galilei observed with his telescope that Venus showed phases, despite remaining near the Sun
in Earth's sky (first image). This proved that it orbits the Sun and not Earth, as predicted
by Copernicus's heliocentric model and disproved the then conventional geocentric model (second image).
Galileo began his telescopic observations in the later part of 1609, and by March 1610 was able to
publish a small book, The Starry Messenger (Sidereus Nuncius), describing some of his discoveries:
mountains on the Moon, lesser moons in orbit around Jupiter, and the resolution of what had been
thought to be very cloudy masses in the sky (nebulae) into collections of stars too faint to see
individually without a telescope. Other observations followed, including the phases of Venus and the
existence of sunspots.
Galileo's contributions caused difficulties for theologians and natural philosophers of the time, as they
contradicted scientific and philosophical ideas based on those of Aristotle and Ptolemy and closely
associated with the Catholic Church. In particular, Galileo's observations of the phases of Venus,
which showed it to circle the Sun, and the observation of moons orbiting Jupiter, contradicted
the geocentric model of Ptolemy, which was backed and accepted by the Roman Catholic Church,[8]
[9]
 and supported the Copernican model advanced by Galileo.[10]
Jesuit astronomers, experts both in Church teachings, science, and in natural philosophy, were at
first skeptical and hostile to the new ideas; however, within a year or two the availability of good
telescopes enabled them to repeat the observations. In 1611, Galileo visited the Collegium
Romanum in Rome, where the Jesuit astronomers by that time had repeated his
observations. Christoph Grienberger, one of the Jesuit scholars on the faculty, sympathized with
Galileo's theories, but was asked to defend the Aristotelian viewpoint by Claudio Acquaviva, the
Father General of the Jesuits. Not all of Galileo's claims were completely accepted: Christopher
Clavius, the most distinguished astronomer of his age, never was reconciled to the idea of mountains
on the Moon, and outside the collegium many still disputed the reality of the observations. In a letter
to Kepler of August 1610,[11] Galileo complained that some of the philosophers who opposed his
discoveries had refused even to look through a telescope:[12]