The year 2009 was celebrated by the International Astronomical Union and UNESCO as the International Year of Astronomy. It marked the passing of 400 years since Galileo Galilei irst used a telescope for astronomical research, making the ground-breaking observations that would inally refute the geocentric Ptolemaic worldview and establish the heliocentric Copernican one. In the same year, Johannes Kepler published his Astronomia Nova, in which he introduced his laws of planetary motion for the Solar System. The year 1609 signalled a true revolution in astronomy.

Since then, astronomical observations with telescopes have increasingly become the norm, until today, when institutes around the world host giant telescopes that work every available second to collect immense quantities of data. Each technological advance has brought new, and often totally unexpected, discoveries about our Universe, enriching our cultural heritage.