History of the center of the Universe Sun at the center of our Solar System. The word comes from the Greek ( "helios" "sun" and "kentron" "center"). The notion that the Earth revolves around the Sun had been proposed as early as the 3rd century BCE by Aristarchus of Samos, but had received no support from most other ancient astronomers. Nicolaus Copernicus' major theory of a heliocentric model was published in "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" ("On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres"), in 1543, the year of his death, though he had formulated the theory several decades earlier. Copernicus' ideas were not immediately accepted, but they did
Allegory of the Planets and Continents Allegory of the Planets and Continents Allegory of the Planets and Continents is an 18th-century painting by Italian artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Done in oil on canvas, the allegorical work uses human figures to represent members of the Greco-Roman pantheon, the planets, and four continents. The painting is an elaborate oil sketch made by Tiepolo in preparation for rendering a similar, larger version of his scene. Tiepolo's work was painted to be hung above a staircase of the Wurzburg Residence in Wurzburg, Germany. The intricate painting depicts figures circling around Tiepolo's rendering of Apollo, the sun god; this represents planets