1. Copernicus www.polishamericancenter.org
Uncommon Sense
Copernicus

2. First edition of Copernicus’s book - about 260 have survived –that was published shortly after the author’s death in 1543 which showed that the Sun was centre of the Universe

5. De Revolutionibus, Copernicus www.hps.cam.ac.uk

6. De Revolutionibus, Copernicus www.hps.cam.ac.uk

7. De Revolutionibus, Copernicus www.hps.cam.ac.uk

9.
Nicolaus Copernicus’s book, published shortly after the author’s death in 1543, offered scholars a new vision of the cosmos. Making the Sun rather than the Earth the centre of the universe offered a solution to many puzzling observations of the planets, although it would be many years before the controversial theory was widely accepted. This is a first edition of the book, one of only about 260 that survive.

10. Copernicus' model, a rediscovery of the one proposed by Aristarchus centuries before (see Sect. 2.4), explained the observed motions of the planets (eg. the peculiar motions of Mars; see Fig. 2.13) more simply than Ptolemy's by assuming a central sun around which all planets rotated, with the slower planets having orbits farther from the sun. Superimposed on this motion, the planets rotate around their axes. Note that Copernicus was not completely divorced from the old Aristotelian views: the planets are assumed to move in circles around the sun (Fig. 3.3).

11. Copenicus' model, a rediscovery of the one proposed by Aristarchus centuries before (see Sect. 2.4), explained the observed motions of the planets (eg. the peculiar motions of Mars; see Fig. 2.13) more simply than Ptolemy's by assuming a central sun around which all planets rotated, with the slower planets having orbits farther from the sun. Superimposed on this motion, the planets rotate around their axes. Note that Copernicus was not completely divorced from the old Aristotelian views: the planets are assumed to move in circles around the sun (Fig. 3.3).