Ultra-rare first edition book from Galileo heading to auction

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. A small library's worth of rare medieval and Renaissance books are heading to auction on July 9. The expansive lot includes a portable Magna Carta, an early scientific encyclopedia, a surgical codex, and one of the oldest surviving Sephardic Torah scrolls. But according to Christies's Auction House, one manuscript is the first of its kind to go up for sale in over a century: a copy of the first pseudonymous astronomical text co-written by Galileo Galilei. The evening of October 9, 1604, offered an unexpected and ultimately revolutionary moment for astronomy.