Editing Moon (section)

=== Telescopic exploration (1609–1959) ===
[[File:Galileo's sketches of the moon.png|thumb |upright |[[Galileo]]'s sketches of the Moon from the ground-breaking ''[[Sidereus Nuncius]]'' (1610), publishing among other findings the first descriptions of the Moon's topography]]

The [[telescope]] was developed and reported on in 1608. The first record of telescopic astronomy and rough mapping of the Moon's features is from early summer 1609 by [[Thomas Harriot]], but which he did not publish. At the same time [[Galileo Galilei]] too started to use telescopes to observe the sky and the Moon, recording later that year more detailed observations and crucial conclusions, such as that the Moon was not smooth, featuring mountains and craters, which he published in 1610 in his ground-breaking and soon widely discussed book {{lang|la |[[Sidereus Nuncius]]}}.

Later in the 17th century, the efforts of [[Giovanni Battista Riccioli]] and [[Francesco Maria Grimaldi]] led to the system of naming of lunar features in use today. The more exact 1834–1836 {{lang|la |Mappa Selenographica}} of [[Wilhelm Beer]] and [[Johann Heinrich von Mädler]], and their associated 1837 book {{lang|de |Der Mond}}, the first [[trigonometry|trigonometrically]] accurate study of lunar features, included the heights of more than a thousand mountains, and introduced the study of the Moon at accuracies possible in earthly geography.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Consolmagno |first=Guy J. |date=1996 |title=Astronomy, Science Fiction and Popular Culture: 1277 to 2001 (And beyond) |journal=[[Leonardo (journal)|Leonardo]] |volume=29 |issue=2 |pages=127–132 |jstor=1576348 |doi=10.2307/1576348 |s2cid=41861791}}</ref> Lunar craters, first noted by Galileo, were thought to be [[volcanic]] until the 1870s proposal of [[Richard Proctor]] that they were formed by collisions.<ref name="worldbook" /> This view gained support in 1892 from the experimentation of geologist [[Grove Karl Gilbert]], and from comparative studies from 1920 to the 1940s,<ref name="Hall1977" /> leading to the development of [[lunar geologic timescale|lunar stratigraphy]], which by the 1950s was becoming a new and growing branch of [[astrogeology]].<ref name="worldbook" />