A4_4 I spy with my telescope eye...

Abstract

In this paper, we determine if a telescope could be used to identify trade ships entering port two hours earlier than a naked eye, as was claimed by Galileo. We find the difference in resolvable distances between a telescope and a naked eye to be 35 km. By then considering the speed of a 17th century trade ship, we find the time difference as 2.36 hours, similar to Galileo’s claim. We have ignored the effect of aberrations caused by imperfect lenses, which may significantly impactthis result.