Around 350 BC,the planets for over two thousand years! Aristotle was of the opinion that all the heavenly bodies, including the sun, the wanderers (planets), and the stars, were in circular motion about a (planets), and the stars, were in circular motion about a fixed and unmoving
Earth. So authoritative was Aristotle that the Catholic church later accepted this view as its official doctrine on the matter and used its religious influence to enforce this position. As a direct result, Galileo was arrested for espousing views to the contrary in 1600 A.D.! However, a century before Galileo, the first serious questioning of Aristotle’s views ad already begun.
Astronomy (or rather astrology) was very popular at the time of Copernicus,around 1500 A.D., and the inability to accurately describe the motions of the heavenly bodies increased efforts to find a better explanation than Aristotle’s. Copernicus was both an astronomer and mathematician, and he used the observed angular positions of the planets and rigonometry to correctly place the solar system in its proper order, with the sun at the center and the earth as just another wanderer in motion about the sun like the other planets. However, the idea of a moving earth and similarity with the other planets was quite radical at the time and made his heliocentric (sun-centered) hypothesis hard to accept.For instance, Tycho Brahe, the late sixteenth-century astronomer, completely rejected the notion. Tycho, in the years prior to his death in 1601, conducted the most exhaustive and accurate recording of the movements of the planets to date. He was sure that his data held the secret to the mystery of planetary movements, but his mathematical ability was too poor to check out his theories. Therefore, Tycho solicited the assistance of mathematicianslike Johannes Kepler.after Tycho’s death, Kepler came into possession of most of the observational records kept over the many years. Kepler believed in the Coperni- 26
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