De revolutionibus orbium coelestium 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 widely accepted since ancient times. Copernicus initially outlined his system in a short, untitled, anonymous manuscript that he distributed to several friends, referred to as the "Commentariolus". A physician's library list dating to 1514 includes a manuscript whose description matches the "Commentariolus", so Copernicus must
The Royal Hunt of the Sun Music is a key element to this play, more so than any other by Peter Shaffer. He wanted strange and disturbing sounds produced on primitive instruments such as saws, reed pipes, drums (tablas and bongos) and cymbals to create the aural world of 16th Century Peru. Shaffer was so impressed with Marc Wilkinson's score for "The Royal Hunt Of The Sun", which he has described as "perhaps the best score for a play to be written since Grieg embellished "Peer Gynt"", that he now considers it integral to the play. The staging is relatively simple: an upper and lower part