Francesco Fontana

Francesco Fontana was a lawyer of Naples and one of the finest telescope makers of his day. In 1645 AD he saw a small companion beside Venus, three times that year and once more in 1646, and he was the first to put such a sighting on record: the earliest of all the observations of Neith.

Drawings of Neith long credited to Fontana were later shown to be the work of Marcus Aurelius Chamberlain Bentworthe (see The History of Neith).