How does Galileo break with the past in his physics and astronomy? What elements of continuity with prior traditions remain in his works?

Sidereus Nuncius told the learned community that a new age had begun, and that the universe and the way in which it was studied would never be the same. heavenly phenomena hidden since the beginning of time were suddenly revealed by the telescope and could be seen by anyone who could procure one of these devices. In the autumn of 1609, Galileo Galilei, a forty-five-year-old professor of mathematics at the University of Padua, directed a twenty-powered telescope at the Moon, setting off a chain of events that was to shake the intellectual edifice of Europe to its foundations.