Machina Mundi: Images and Measures of the Cosmos from Copernicus to Newton

The exhibition is part of the European project WorldView Network - Culture 2000. It was born from the collaboration between the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza and four prestigious institutions, namely the Landskrona Kulturforvaltining och Tycho Brahe Museet at Ven (Sweden), the Muzeum Nikolaja Kopernica of Frombork (Poland), the Nàrodnì Technickè Muzeum of Prague (Czech Republic), and the Woolsthorpe Manor National Trust (England). Machina Mundi proposes a journey in the universe through the images devised by astronomers and scientists from the 16th to 18th century: from the Ptolemaic geocentric system, as it was inherited by early 16th-century astronomers, to the heliocentric synthesis of Isaac Newton, as well as the measurements and discoveries of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Galileo and Kepler. Four planetariums, faithful reconstructions of ancient cosmological models and a number of hands-on exhibits aid the understanding of some essential concepts of ancient astronomy.

Exhibition Dates