To the Arabians is due the credit of having kept alive the study of the stars during the dark ages of European history. They erected some fine observatories, notably in Spain and in the neighbourhood of Bagdad. Following them, some of the Oriental peoples embraced the science in earnest; Ulugh Beigh, grandson of the famous Tamerlane, founding, for instance, a great observatory at Samarcand in Central Asia. The Mongol emperors of India also established large astronomical instruments in the chief cities of their empire. When the revival of learning took place in the West, the Europeans came to the front once more in science, and rapidly forged ahead of those who had so assiduously kept alight the lamp of knowledge through the long centuries. The dethronement of the older theories by the Copernican system, in which the earth was relegated to its true place, was fortunately soon followed by an invention of immense import, the invention of the Telescope. It is to this instrument, indeed, that we are indebted for our knowledge of the actual scale of the celestial distances. It penetrated the depths of space; it brought the distant orbs so near, that men could note the detail on the planets, or measure the small changes in their positions in the sky which resulted from the movement of our own globe. It was in the year 1609 that the telescope was first constructed. A year or so previous to this a spectacle-maker of Middleburgh in Holland, one Hans Lippershey, had, it appears, hit upon the fact that distant objects, when viewed through certain glass lenses suitably arranged, looked nearer.[8] News of this discovery reached the ears of Galileo Galilei, of Florence, the foremost philosopher of the day, and he at once applied his great scientific attainments to the construction of an instrument based upon this principle. The result was what was called an "optick tube," which magnified distant objects some few times. It was not much larger than what we nowadays contemptuously refer to as a "spy-glass," yet its employment upon the leading celestial objects instantly sent astronomical science onward with a bound. In rapid succession Galileo announced world-moving discoveries; large spots upon the face of the sun; crater-like mountains upon the moon; four subordinate bodies, or satellites, circling around the planet Jupiter; and a strange appearance in connection with Saturn, which later telescopic observers found to be a broad flat ring encircling that planet. And more important still, the magnified image of Venus showed itself in the telescope at certain periods in crescent and other forms; a result which Copernicus is said to have announced should of necessity follow if his system were the true one.