copernicus on the revolutions of the heavenly spheres

He was a follower of an earlier scholar named Philolaus (470- 385 BCE), who thought the Earth, Sun and other celestial objects moved around a ‘Central Fire’. Many scientific advances emerge by someone questioning problems in the status quo, and Aristarchus of Samos (310-230 BCE) was one such person. And truly, if the gods made the earth for us, why shouldn’t we be the center of all things? This bothered the scientists, but they were reluctant to give up their idea that humans were the center of everything. Mercury and Venus showed ‘retrograde motion’, where, for a few days of the year, the planets appear to change direction of travel. It couldn’t give accurate predictions of positions of some planets. But, being early scientists, they did notice something odd about the geocentric model. For scholars like Plato and Aristotle watching the Sun, Moon and stars go across the sky there was not enough reason to think otherwise. From the ancient Chinese to the Greeks, the mapped heavens were divided into shells with the Earth in the middle. But we still thought that the entire universe was ‘geocentric’, or revolved around the Earth. We had built pyramids, great walls, explored the world and moved away from the idea of a flat Earth (good news for all those sailors on long voyages – no risk of falling off the edge). Human civilization was already over 5000 years old by the times of Copernicus (1473-1543). Photo and copyright Nuwanthika Fernando ©, all rights reserved. First edition print of Nicolaus Copernicus’s ‘On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres’. Its age is not the only reason why it’s so valuable – this is where he introduced the ‘heliocentric’ model of the solar system, where the Earth is taken out of the centre of the solar system to be replaced with the Sun. The carefully preserved first edition print of Nicolaus Copernicus’ ‘On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres’ is 473 years old and valued at just over US$1 million. Nuwanthika Fernando is an astronomy guide at Sydney Observatory, and studies the dynamics of satellite galaxy planes for her PhD at the University of Sydney.ĭuring a recent conference visit to the Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte in Naples, Italy, I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a book that created a true paradigm shift in the way we think.

Copernicus on the revolutions of the heavenly spheres