Giovanni Battista Hodierna
Italian astronomer
Giovanni Battista Hodierna, also spelled as Odierna (13 April 1597 – 6 April 1660) was an Italian astronomer at the court of Giulio Tomasi, Duke of Palma (Palma di Montechiaro). He compiled a catalogue of comets and other celestial objects containing some 40 entries, including at least 19 real and verifiable nebulous objects that might be confused with comets.
Biography
Hodierna was born in Ragusa, Sicily and died in Palma di Montechiaro. While serving as a Roman Catholic priest in Ragusa, he also practised astronomy.
In 1654 he published a book entitled De systemate orbis cometici, deque admirandis coeli characteribus that contained a catalogue of celestial objects and a list of double stars. The work anticipated Messier's catalogue and the double star catalogues by Christian Mayer and William Herschel, but had little impact. Messier seems not to have known of it.
Hodierna was prolific in publication, and his interests spanned many disciplines. In addition to his astronomical observations, he utilized optic microscopes to study insects, publishing on the multifaceted eye of flies and that in bee colonies only the queen is oviparous.
Works
Archimede redivivo colla stadera del momento, dove non solamente si insegna il modo di scoprire le frodi nella falsificazione dell'oro e dell'argento; ma si notifica l'uso delli pesi e delle misure civili presso diverse nazioni del mondo e di questo regno di Sicilia, Decio Cirillo publisher, Palermo, 1644.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q55007799. VIAF identifies the subject as 71540635. The Library of Congress control number is n85101171. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1597, 1660, 1654 and 1644.
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This entry incorporates text from “Giovanni Battista Hodierna” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.