Barafonda's Italian Coin

The original mission Barafonda meant for this coin was to photograph this coin with various airplanes, airplane monuments on the ground, and on airports as it is traveling. I would like to add the mission to fly long distances around the world! It would be also nice to visit Italy, Barafonda's home, and interesting places related to astronomy and science in general, in honor of Galileo Galilei.

I have found this coin on September 11, 2008 in the Tancici Dum cache in Prague (GC18YJO), the Czech Republic. It was not activated. I have contacted its owner (known thanks to the attached label and a log entry inside the cache), but sadly he didn't activate the coin anyway. After keeping it for more than two weeks, I have decided to activate the coin myself and name it after its original owner. Coins shall move from cache to cache!

Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was a Tuscan (Italian) physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the scientific revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations, and support for Copernicanism. Galileo has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy", the "father of modern physics", the "father of science", and “the Father of Modern Science.” The motion of uniformly accelerated objects, taught in nearly all high school and introductory college physics courses, was studied by Galileo as the subject of kinematics. His contributions to observational astronomy include the telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus, the discovery of the four largest satellites of Jupiter, named the Galilean moons in his honour, and the observation and analysis of sunspots. Galileo also worked in applied science and technology, improving compass design. Galileo's championing of Copernicanism was controversial within his lifetime. The geocentric view had been dominant since the time of Aristotle, and the controversy engendered by Galileo's presentation of heliocentrism as proven fact resulted in the Catholic Church's prohibiting its advocacy as empirically proven fact, because it was not empirically proven at the time and was contrary to the literal meaning of Scripture. Galileo was eventually forced to recant his heliocentrism and spent the last years of his life under house arrest on orders of the Roman Inquisition. (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.)