Aristarchus's Metamorphosis

In the beginnings of the creation of a model of our planetary system, Greek philosopher Aristotle stated that Earth could be found at the center of the universe, giving birth to an idea called "geocentrism" around 300 B.C. This belief consisted of planets orbiting Earth in perfectly circular paths called "epicycles". This worked for a while, but as more and more observations were done, the model started to fall apart, with a multitude of additional corrections changing the model until it was no longer thought to be valid. It should be worth noting that around the same time but a little later, a Greek astronomer named Aristarchus of Samos constructed a model which proposed all the planets revolved around the Sun, however, because Aristotle had a much stronger influence, Aristarchus' ideas didn't catch on until after his death. This is when Claudius Ptolemaeus started to introduce his updated model around 140 A.D. This new model, known as the Ptolemaic model, still kept Earth as the center of the system, but with new orbital mechanics influencing the planets and stars. It was then believed that the planets still orbited Earth in circles, but their paths …show more content…
This idea was called "heliocentrism" and stated that Earth spins on an axis, and similar to all of the other planets orbits the Sun which is the center of the "solar system". This helped to explain the day-night cycle of our planet, as well as the apparent "curly orbits" in previous models as an effect called retrograde motion. This began an astronomical awakening known now as the Copernican revolution. However, his ideas were not widely accepted at first as the older geocentric models still had a firm grasp on the astronomical community. It wasn't until after his death, and the support of observational evidence, that the theory really took