Inspired by Galileo's Telescopes

An early interest in astronomy…

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Jacques: When I was ten I joined an astronomy club. Someone gave a talk about Galileo building his own telescope. I thought I’d try to build one too.

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Antonia: And did you?

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Jacques: Well, I didn’t grind the lenses like he did but I put two lenses at opposite ends of two sliding cardboard tubes.

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Antonia: It worked?

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Jacques: After a fashion. It only had a magnification of about 3 times, and the image was fuzzy. But I painted the tubes red and gold like Galileo’s. It looked artistic.

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Voice-over

The telescope was not even as powerful as a spyglass, which preceded Galileo’s models. He ground his own lenses and went from 8 times magnification up to 30 times. And the instruments looked good too. An age of art and science.

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Kaguya Hime's Telescope

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Moon–watching…

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Okusan: What’s she doing?

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Taketori no Okina: Looking at the moon again. Always through that bamboo tube.

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Okusan: What does she see up there?

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Taketori no Okina: Probably more than we can see or understand.

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Voice-over

A fragment of fractured fairy tale? Well, the Taketori Monogatari (aka the tale of Kaguya Hime) has several elements of science fiction. A tiny baby and gold nuggets found in bamboo stems. Kaguya Hime’s people come down from the moon to take her back there. Perhaps Kaguya Hime picked up a bit of astronomy while she was on Earth. Maybe the bamboo tube had lenses and was the first telescope.

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