Christoph Scheiner

Scheiner, Christoph (1573–1650)Germanscholar and astronomer. In 1611, with the aid of a telescope he built himself, he became one of several independent discoverers of sunspots (the others included Galileo, who unjustly accused Scheiner of claiming priority). He believed them to be small bodies in orbit round the Sun, and calculated their ‘orbital inclination’ to the ecliptic as 7° 30′; the present-day value for the Sun's axial inclination is 7° 15′.

Christoph Scheiner , 1579?-1650, German astronomer and mathematician, a Jesuit priest. He taught at Ingolstadt, Rome, and elsewhere and became rector of a Jesuit college at Neisse, Germany, in 1622. His observation of sunspots in 1611 was recorded in two works (1612) and resulted in a controversy with Galileo, who claimed that he was the first to discover sunspots. Scheiner made over 2,000 observations of the sun and embodied the results of his studies in Rosa ursina (1630). His pioneer research on the physiology of vision appeared in his Oculus (1619).