Copernican heliocentrism
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Copernican heliocentrism is the name given to the astronomical model developed by Nicolaus Copernicus and published in 1543. It positioned the Sun near the center of the Universe, motionless, with Earth and the other planets rotating around it in circular paths modified by epicycles and at uniform speeds. The Copernican model departed from the Ptolemaic system that prevailed in Western culture for centuries, placing Earth at the center of the Universe, and is often regarded as the launching point to modern astronomy and the Scientific Revolution.
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Summary
Copernicus offered seven postulates:
- Celestial bodies do not all revolve around a single point
- The centre of Earth is the centre of the lunar sphere—the orbit of the moon around Earth
- All the spheres rotate around the Sun, which is near the centre of the Universe
- The distance between Earth and the Sun is an insignificant fraction of the distance from Earth and Sun to the stars, so parallax is not observed in the stars
- The stars are immovable; their apparent daily motion is caused by the daily rotation of Earth
- Earth is moved in a sphere around the Sun, causing the apparent annual migration of the Sun; Earth has more than one motion
- Earth’s orbital motion around the Sun causes the seeming reverse in direction of the motions of the planets.
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See also
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