WHEN he was buried - at the insistence of the Catholic Church in unconsecrated ground - Galileo Galilei left behind at least two conundrums: how could a man with impaired eyesight have made the observations that revolutionised astronomy; and did his faulty vision alter what he saw and recorded?

When his body was moved to the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, some 100 years later on the initiative of local freemasons, it gave rise to a third riddle: who was the woman found buried alongside him?

The young woman whose body was found alongside his is thought to be that of his eldest daughter, Virginia, who became a nun and died at the age of 33. But the theory lacks proof.

To obtain it would cost "some hundreds of thousands of euros", said Mr Galluzzi, who is hoping to raise the funding before the end of 2009, which the UN has declared International Year of Astronomy to mark the 400th anniversary of Galileo's observations.