Christiaan Huygens
Christiaan Huygens was the first to discover a moon of Saturn, when he observed Titan on 25 Mar 1655. Working with his brother Constantijn, Huygens had developed a better way of making lenses which allowed him to make an improved telescope. Not wishing to reveal his discovery of the planet until he had confirmed his finding, Huygens made an anagram and presented it to his friends. Later, when he had confirmed his observations, he printed a tract, De Saturni Luna Observatio Nova in The Hague in 1656, where the meaning of the anagram was revealed.
- See this page for a picture of a lens made by Huygens.
- More on the anagram and Systema Saturnium
- See the online text of Systema Saturnium at the Smithsoniam Institution.
4 Moons of Saturn from the Hubble Space Telescope, Titan is the largest. (NASA)
