  The Italian Jesuit astronomer Giovanni Battista (Giambattista) Riccioli
constructed a powerful, thoroughly scientific argument in favor of geocentrism
- an argument based on telescopic observations of stars. This paper contains a
rendition of a chapter from Riccioli's Almagestum Novum in which he lays out
this argument. Riccioli opposed Galileo's heliocentrism, but like Galileo,
relied on telescopic observations to make his case. Riccioli's observations and
argument were both valid, lacking only in that the functioning of the telescope
was not fully understood at the time.
