One of the most famous Italian Jesuits of the time, Giuseppe Biancani ( 1565 – 1624 ), was teaching at Parma when Riccioli arrived there.

Riccioli described himself as a theologian, but one with a strong and ongoing interest in astronomy since his student days, when he studied under Biancani.

Copernicus was given its name by Giovanni Riccioli, an Italian Jesuit who in conformity with church doctrine publicly opposed the heliocentric system revived by Nicolaus Copernicus.

Riccioli and Grimaldi made numerous measurements of star disks using a telescope, providing a detailed description of their procedure so that anyone who wanted could replicate it.

In the words of Alfredo Dinis, Riccioli enjoyed great prestige and great opposition, both in Italy and abroad, not only as a man of encyclopedic knowledge but also as someone who could understand and discuss all the relevant issues in cosmology, observational astronomy, and geography of the time.

Initially, the name Galilaeus had been applied by Giovanni Battista Riccioli, an Italian Jesuit who produced one of the first detailed maps of the Moon in 1651, to a large and bright nearby albedo feature ( now known as Reiner Gamma ).

The crater name Cabeus first appeared in the 1651 work Almagestum Novum by Giovanni Riccioli, who named it after Niccolò Cabeo.

The modern scheme of lunar nomenclature was devised by Giambattista Riccioli, a Jesuit priest and scholar who lived in northern Italy.

Riccioli accepted Kepler's ideas, but remained opposed to the heliocentric theory.

Riccioli built an astronomical observatory in Bologna at the College of St. Lucia, equipped with many instruments for astronomical observations, including telescopes, quadrants, sextants, and other traditional instruments.

Many observers claimed to have determined such parallaxes, but Tycho Brahe and Giovanni Battista Riccioli concluded that they existed only in the minds of the observers, and were due to instrumental and personal errors.

For example, in dropping balls of wood and lead that both weighed 2. 5 ounces, Riccioli found that upon the leaden ball having traversed 280 Roman feet the wooden ball had traversed only 240 feet ( a table in the New Almagest contains data on twenty one such paired drops ).

Although Riccioli rejected the Copernican theory, he named a prominent lunar crater " Copernicus ", and he named other important craters after other proponents of the Copernican theory such as Kepler, Galileo and Lansbergius.

Oddly, none of these fictions made use of the lunar maps contemporaneously created by Hevelius, Riccioli and others.

Mare Tranquillitatis was named in 1651 by astronomers Francesco Grimaldi and Giovanni Battista Riccioli in their lunar map Almagestum novum.

In 1651, Giovanni Riccioli named the lunar crater Schickard after him.

In astronomy, he built and used instruments to measure lunar mountains as well as the height of clouds, and drew an accurate map or, selenograph, which was published by Riccioli and now adorns the entrance to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D. C.

On one of these maps, Riccioli provided names for lunar features — names which are the basis for the nomenclature of lunar features still in use today.

Riccioli named large lunar areas for weather.

Riccioli is a large lunar impact crater located near the western limb of the Moon.

By convention these features are identified on lunar maps by placing the letter on the side of the crater midpoint that is closest to Riccioli.

This was a factor in the choice of the crater's name when Giovanni Riccioli was creating his system of lunar nomenclature, as Kepler used the observations of Tycho Brahe while devising his three laws of planetary motion.

Based on the measurements of the size of the Earth conducted by Riccioli of Bologna ( at 321, 815 Bologna feet to the degree ), Mouton proposed a decimal system of measurement based on the circumference of the Earth, explaining the advantages of a system based on nature.

Under Jesuit scientists Giovanni Battista Riccioli and Niccolo Zucchi the young Bartoli, together with his younger contemporary Francesco Maria Grimaldi was involved in noteworthy experiments and discoveries of the planetary heavens.

" However, after the advent of the telescope showed problems with some geocentric models ( by demonstrating that Venus circles the sun, for example ), the Tychonic system and variations on that system became very popular among geocentrists, and the Jesuit astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli would continue Tycho's use of physics, stellar astronomy ( now with a telescope ), and religion to argue against heliocentrism and for Tycho's system well into the seventeenth century ( see Riccioli ).

Between 1640 and 1650, working with Riccioli, he investigated the free fall of objects, confirming that the distance of fall was proportional to the square of the time taken.

Riccioli dealt not only with astronomy in his research, but also with physics, arithmetic, geometry, optics, gnomonics, geography, and chronology.

Riccioli envisioned that the New Almagest would have three volumes, but only the first ( with its 1500 pages split into two parts ) was completed.

Riccioli is credited with being the first person to measure the acceleration due to gravity of falling bodies.

By counting the number of pendulum swings that elapsed between transits of certain stars, Riccioli was able to experimentally verify that the period of a pendulum swinging with small amplitude is constant to within two swings out of 3212 ( 0. 062 %).

The results were pendulums with periods within 1. 85 %, and then 0. 69 %, of the desired value ; and Riccioli even sought to improve on the latter value.

Riccioli said that for measuring time a pendulum was not a perfectly reliable tool, but in comparison with other methods it was an exceedingly reliable tool.

With pendulums to keep time ( sometimes augmented by a chorus of Jesuits chanting in time with a pendulum to provide an audible timer ) and a tall structure in the form of Bologna's Torre de Asinelli from which to drop objects, Riccioli was able to engage in precise experiments with falling bodies.

As the frontispiece of the New Almagest illustrates ( see figure at right ), Riccioli favoured a modified version of Tycho Brahe's system ; here is how he described the system that " came to mind " when he was in Parma: " it shares everything with the Tychonian system, except the orbits of Saturn and Jupiter ; for their center was not the Sun, but Earth itself ".

Riccioli argued that the problems with Galileo's conjecture were a mark against the Copernican world system, but modern writers differ in regards to Riccioli's reasoning on this.

Riccioli then calculated the physical size that the stars they measured must have in order for them to both be as far away as was required in the Copernican theory to show no parallax, and have the sizes seen with the telescope.

Between 1644 and 1656, Riccioli was occupied by topographical measurements, working with Grimaldi, determining values for the circumference of Earth and the ratio of water to land.

Riccioli had come up with 373, 000 pes despite the fact that references to a Roman degree in antiquity had always been 75 milliare or 375, 000 pes.

Giovanni Battista Riccioli ( 17 April 1598 – 25 June 1671 ) was an Italian astronomer and a Catholic priest in the Jesuit order.

Perhaps for this reason Riccioli has at times been portrayed as a secret Copernican — someone whose position as a Jesuit necessitated opposition to the Copernican theory.

* 1598 – Giovanni Riccioli, Italian astronomer ( d. 1671 )

* April 17 – Giovanni Battista Riccioli, Italian astronomer ( d. 1671 )

* June 25 – Giovanni Battista Riccioli, Italian astronomer ( b. 1598 )

* June 25-Giovanni Battista Riccioli, Italian astronomer ( born 1598 )

Aristarchus was originally named after the Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos by the Italian map maker Giovanni Riccioli.