De revolutionibus orbium coelestium divided into six "books" (sections or parts), following closely the layout of Ptolemy's "Almagest" which it updated and replaced: Copernicus argued that the universe comprised eight spheres. The outermost consisted of motionless, fixed stars, with the Sun motionless at the center. The known planets revolved about the Sun, each in its own sphere, in the order: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. The Moon, however, revolved in its sphere around the Earth. What appeared to be the daily revolution of the Sun and fixed stars around the Earth was actually the Earth's daily rotation on its own axis. Copernicus adhered
Newcomb's Tables of the Sun adopted by the General Assembly of the IAU at the 1976 and 1979 meetings." The new fundamental ephemeris was prepared by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and named DE200/LE200. It uses numerical integration. Newcomb's Tables of the Sun Newcomb's "Tables of the Sun" is the short title and running head of a work by the American astronomer and mathematician Simon Newcomb entitled "Tables of the Motion of the Earth on its Axis and Around the Sun" on pages 1–169 of "Tables of the Four Inner Planets" (1895), volume VI of the serial publication "Astronomical Papers Prepared for the Use of the