On Sunspots collects the correspondence that constituted the public debate, including the first English translation of Scheiner’s two tracts as well as Galileo’s three letters, which have previously appeared only in abridged form. In addition, Albert Van Helden and Eileen Reeves have supplemented the correspondence with lengthy introductions, extensive notes, and a bibliography. The result will become the standard work on the subject, essential for students and historians of astronomy, the telescope, and early modern Catholicism.
Eileen Reeves is professor of comparative literature at Princeton University. Albert Van Helden is professor of the history of science at the University of Utrecht and the translator of Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius, also published by the University of Chicago Press.