Welcome to "Innumerabili mondi" Astronomical Observatory of Arpino (Italy)

"Esistono infiniti Soli, innumerabili mondi che ruotano intorno a questi Soli, similmente a come i sette pianeti ruotano intorno al nostro Sole. Questi mondi sono abitati da esseri viventi." / "There are infinite Suns, innumerable worlds that revolve around these Suns, similar to how the seven planets revolve around our Sun. These worlds are inhabited by living beings."

Welcome to the Astronomical Observatory "Innumerabili Mondi" website, whose name takes inspiration from these words, included in "De l'infinito universo et Mondi" by Giordano Bruno (1584). Bruno, not the first but probably the most famous, supposed the existence of extrasolar planets in a "geocentric theory" era, so, despite being a philosopher and therefore nothing further from scientific thought, I believe he deserves all our admiration for having "imagined" what was then scientifically demonstrated only many centuries later.

Oh, yes, the earth and the other 7 planets (*) are not the only ones to rotate around a star. To date, over 5,000 have been discovered and only in relation to stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. Obviously there are billions of them in the universe... it is therefore legitimate to think that very likely one of these exoplanets can host (or have done so in the past) a form of life... intelligent? I think so.

My passion for astronomy has returned in recent years stronger than ever, also thanks to the astrophysicist and archaeoastronomer Paolo Colona, ​​through the organization of the Accademia delle stelle.

(*) Surely you have noticed that Giordano Bruno mentions 7 planets including the Earth while today we know that they are 8. At that time in fact the ice giants Uranus and Neptune were not known because they were invisible to the naked eye. Furthermore among the planets appeared the Moon which as everyone knows is instead a satellite of the Earth.