A diagram lost for more than 350 years documents a spectacular sky of 1630.
Around midday on 24 January 1630, seven suns seemed to blaze over Rome. Many onlookers took the phenomenon as a celestial omen of good or ill fortune, but an adherent of the scientific revolution also took note of the kaleidoscopic sky. Jesuit scholar Christoph Scheiner recorded the phenomenon, along with a similar one seen ten months earlier. Read more