De revolutionibus orbium coelestium resides at the Archives of the University of Santo Tomas in the Miguel de Benavides Library. In January 2017, a second-edition copy was stolen as part of a heist of rare books from Heathrow Airport and remains unrecovered. English translations of "De revolutionibus" have included: De revolutionibus orbium coelestium De revolutionibus orbium coelestium ("On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres") is the seminal work on the heliocentric theory of the Renaissance astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543). The book, first printed in 1543 in Nuremberg, Holy Roman Empire, offered an alternative model of the universe to Ptolemy's geocentric system, which had been
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.