Astronomy, Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543). Considered the true architect of the new astronomy. Based on the reading of ancient authors who made reference to the system Heliocentric Aristarchus of Samos observed the improbability of the Ptolemaic System. He wrote the Commentariolus, which deals with the architecture of the planetary system and in the which postulates that the Earth rotates around its axis and that it and the planets move Around the sun; he arrived at these ideas not so much by measurements and observations as by theoretical reasoning. The truth is that with Copernican theories you could not obtain accurate predictions of planetary movements, for which he was forced to introduce a large number of epicycles for the theory to coincide to some extent with the facts. The problem it was based on the fact that Copernicus limited himself to circular orbits.

The new conception of the world did not cause major concern, as long as it was not extracted
from it the disturbing consequence that, if the Earth does not occupy a privileged position
In the Universe, there are also no social privileges that are absolute and unchangeable.

This abolition of privileges within nature, and therefore in society, expressed openly with full transparency, was the heart of thought Copernican that the greatest philosopher of the Renaissance, Giordano Bruno, propagated by all of Europe until excommunicated by the Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist churches, sentenced to prison in the dungeons of the Holy Inquisition for seven years and finish for being burned alive in Rome at the age of 52, on February 17, 1600, without have retracted his heretical position. – Tycho Brahe (1546-16601) – Johannes Kepler (1571-1630). Brahe, from the observatories in Denmark, observes, among other things, the orbit of Mars with large wall quadrants.

These were the most accurate astronomical position measurements before of the invention of the telescope, since the mean error in the determinations of the stars was on the order of 2 ‘of arc. Already in Prague he appoints Kepler as his assistant, from whom he learned his work Mysterium Cosmographicum. On Brahe’s death, Kepler evaluates observations of Mars and in 1609 publishes his Astronomy Nova, with the first two laws that indicate the movement elliptical and the areas swept by the planetary radio vectors. The third law is published in 1619 in his work Harmonices Mundi. Kepler’s contributions are also the creation of the science fiction, the principle of the action of the moon in the tides, and the principle of the camera obscura as its operation in the optics of the eye.

Kepler, who had started his ecclesiastical career at the University of Tübingen, and who was a disciple of the Copernican astronomer Michael Maestlin, he wrote in 1596 “Mystery cosmographic ”, a work that earned him the interest of Tycho Brahe. At first Kepler considered that the movement of the planets should comply with the Pythagorean laws of harmony. This theory is known as the music or harmony of the celestial spheres. A staunch supporter of the Copernican model, he attempted to show that distances from the planets to the Sun were given by spheres inside polyhedra perfect, nested successively inside each other.