History of astronomy is itself a distant sun. During the renaissance period, astronomy began to undergo a revolution in thought known as the Copernican revolution, which gets the name from the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, who proposed a heliocentric system, in which the planets revolved around the Sun and not the Earth. His De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium was published in 1543. While in the long term this was a very controversial claim, in the very beginning it only brought minor controversy. The theory became the dominant view because many figures, most notably Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton championed and improved upon the
The Sun in culture The Sun in culture The Sun, as the source of energy and light for life on earth has been a central object in culture and religion since prehistory. Ritual solar worship has given rise to solar deities in theistic traditions throughout the world, and solar symbolism is ubiquitous. Apart from its immediate connection to light and warmth, the sun is also important in timekeeping as the main indicator of the day and the year. The earliest understanding of the Sun was that of a disk in the sky, whose presence above the horizon creates day and whose absence causes night.