Giordano Bruno motion of the stars to be an illusion caused by the rotation of the Earth on its axis; he also preserved the notion of an immobile center, but it was the Sun rather than the Earth. Copernicus also argued the Earth was a planet orbiting the Sun once every year. However he maintained the Ptolemaic hypothesis that the orbits of the planets were composed of perfect circles—deferents and epicycles—and that the stars were fixed on a stationary outer sphere. Despite the widespread publication of Copernicus' work "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium", during Bruno's time most educated Catholics subscribed to the Aristotelian
Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon Sun has run out of fuel it will consume the planets and restart the cycle. He uses New France as evidence for this theory, claiming that its only being discovered not long ago by European explorers was because the Sun had only recently sent it to Earth. The narrator tries again to construct a way of reaching the Moon, this time through a flying machine that he launches off a cliff's edge. Though the craft crashes, local soldiers attach rockets to it, hoping that it will fly to celebrate the feast day of St. John the Baptist. Dismayed at this