Editing Sidereus Nuncius (section)

==Controversy with the Catholic Church==
Galileo's drawings of an imperfect Moon directly contradicted [[Ptolemy]]'s and [[Aristotle]]'s cosmological descriptions of perfect and unchanging heavenly bodies made of [[aether (classical element)|quintessence]] (the fifth element in ancient and medieval philosophy of which the celestial bodies are composed).

Before the publication of ''Sidereus Nuncius'', the Catholic Church accepted the [[Copernican heliocentrism|Copernican heliocentric system]] as strictly mathematical and hypothetical.<ref>Gattei, Stefano. ''Book Reviews on the History of Science'', Dec. 2012. Museo Galileo.</ref> However, once Galileo began to speak of the Copernican system as fact rather than theory, it introduced "a more chaotic system, a less-than-godly lack of organization."<ref name="Sparknotes">[http://www.sparknotes.com/biography/galileo/section5.rhtml] Sparknotes.</ref> In fact, the Copernican system that Galileo believed to be real challenged the Scripture, "which referred to the sun 'rising' and the earth as 'unmoving.{{' "}}<ref name="Sparknotes" />

The conflict ended in 1633 with Galileo being sentenced to a form of house arrest by the Catholic Church. However, by 1633, Galileo had published other works in support of the Copernican view, and these were largely what caused his sentencing.<ref name="Raphael"/>