Geocentric model that both Venus and Mercury went around the Sun rather than the Earth, but this is no longer accepted. Martianus Capella definitely put Mercury and Venus in orbit around the Sun. Aristarchus of Samos was the most radical. He wrote a work, which has not survived, on heliocentrism, saying that the Sun was at the center of the universe, while the Earth and other planets revolved around it. His theory was not popular, and he had one named follower, Seleucus of Seleucia. In 1543, the geocentric system met its first serious challenge with the publication of Copernicus' "De revolutionibus orbium
Geocentric model it (רקיע- rāqîa'). However, the ancient Greeks believed that the motions of the planets were circular and not elliptical, a view that was not challenged in Western culture until the 17th century, when Johannes Kepler postulated that orbits were heliocentric and elliptical (Kepler's first law of planetary motion). In 1687, Newton showed that elliptical orbits could be derived from his laws of gravitation. The astronomical predictions of Ptolemy's geocentric model were used to prepare astrological and astronomical charts for over 1500 years. The geocentric model held sway into the early modern age, but from the late 16th century onward, it