Giovanni Battista Hodierna

Giovanni Battista Hodierna ( born April 13, 1597 Ragusa; † August 6, 1660 in Palma di Montechiaro ) was an Italian naturalist and astronomer priests, who was also active in the optics and botany. He was a pupil of Galileo in Italy and is considered a pioneer of awakening the natural sciences.

As a young man he observed the comet in his home town of Ragusa in the south of Sicily. Later he became a priest and taught mathematics, but operated still in regular sky watching.

Hodierna published in 1654 the fog catalog De Amir Andis Coeli Characteribus with about 40 entries of deep sky objects, which is a history of astronomy pioneer work showed. However, his observations and data no general public were known, so that it remained unnoticed for a long time. It was only in the 1980s, his work was rediscovered.