Five moon drawings believed to have been painted by the great Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei were unveiled at Padua University on Monday.
The five watercolours are owned by New York-based Martayan Lan, one of the world's leading dealers in antique maps and rare books who recently acquired them in Argentina.
The drawings were presented by top Galileo scholar William Shea, who has spent a lifetime studying the astronomer's works.
"Galileo painted these watercolours, I'm convinced," Shea said.
He said they had been painted in the early 1600s, when Galileo was working on his short treatise Sidereus Nuncius.
Published in Latin in 1610, it was the first scientific treatise based on observations made through a telescope and contains the results of Galileo's early observations of the moon, the stars and the moons of Jupiter, together with illustrations.
At the time of its publication, Galileo was a mathematician at Padua University.
He spent a total of 18 years at Padua, later describing it as "the best period of my life".
Shea speculated that the five moon drawings were given by Galileo as a gift to a Venetian senator.
"Somehow, these paintings then ended up in the suitcase of a Veneto emigrant to South America," he said.
Neither Shea or Martayan Lan gave any details about the paintings' South American seller.
Galileo (1564-1642) was among the most famous victims of the Roman Inquisition.
He was found guilty of heresy by the Catholic Church in 1633 for claiming the earth orbits the sun and was forced by the Inquisition to publicly recant his scientific findings.
The astronomer was formally rehabilitated by the previous pope John Paul II in 1992.
