Who first resolved the Milky Way's band into individual stars with a telescope in 1610?

Galileo Galilei first resolved the Milky Way’s hazy band into individual stars with a telescope in 1610.

Galileo described this discovery in Sidereus Nuncius, or The Starry Messenger, published in 1610. Looking through his newly improved refracting telescope, he found that the cloudy appearance of the Milky Way was produced by enormous numbers of faint stars packed closely together. Many of those stars were too dim or crowded together to be distinguished by the unaided eye.

The observation changed the Milky Way from a mysterious luminous stripe into a stellar system that could be investigated scientifically. Galileo also used the same instrument to study the Moon’s uneven surface, Jupiter’s four largest moons, and the phases of Venus.

This discovery did not yet reveal the Milky Way’s full shape or prove that it was a separate galaxy. Later thinkers, including Immanuel Kant in the 18th century, proposed that it was a vast rotating system of stars. Modern astronomy eventually established its spiral structure and the Sun’s position within its disk.