section_path: Career and first scientific contributions/Astronomy/Sunspots
section_name: Sunspots
paragraph_text: Sunspots
  
  Galileo made naked-eye and telescopic studies of sunspots. Their existence raised another difficulty with the unchanging perfection of the heavens as posited in orthodox Aristotelian celestial physics. An apparent annual variation in their trajectories, observed by Francesco Sizzi and others in 1612–1613, also provided a powerful argument against both the Ptolemaic system and the geoheliocentric system of Tycho Brahe. A dispute over claimed priority in the discovery of sunspots, and in their interpretation, led Galileo to a long and bitter feud with the Jesuit Christoph Scheiner. In the middle was Mark Welser, to whom Scheiner had announced his discovery, and who asked Galileo for his opinion. Both of them were unaware of Johannes Fabricius ' earlier observation and publication of sunspots.