Geocentric model work, the "Almagest", was the culmination of centuries of work by Hellenic, Hellenistic and Babylonian astronomers. For over a millennium European and Islamic astronomers assumed it was the correct cosmological model. Because of its influence, people sometimes wrongly think the Ptolemaic system is identical with the geocentric model. Ptolemy argued that the Earth was a sphere in the center of the universe, from the simple observation that half the stars were above the horizon and half were below the horizon at any time (stars on rotating stellar sphere), and the assumption that the stars were all at some modest distance
Geocentric model to the rightful independence of science and which, from the arguments and controversies they spark, lead many minds to conclude that faith and science are mutually opposed." The footnote on this statement is to Msgr. Pio Paschini's, "Vita e opere di Galileo Galilei", 2 volumes, Vatican Press (1964). Pope John Paul II regretted the treatment which Galileo received, in a speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1992. The Pope declared the incident to be based on a "tragic mutual miscomprehension". He further stated: A few Orthodox Jewish leaders maintain a geocentric model of the universe based on the