Astronomy in the Scientific Renaissance The Scientific Renaissance was a period of innovation. Before the Renaissance, science was insignificant and the world was greatly influenced by the church. During this time, science was immensely changed as there were many new breakthroughs in science. Although there were many advances during the Scientific Renaissance, advances in astronomy were the most important as it changed the way people viewed their solar system in the universe, encouraged scientists to make developments in optics and cartography, and many lost works of the Greek astronomers were rediscovered and applied. Discoveries in astronomy changed the way people viewed their solar system in the universe. Before the Scientific Renaissance, …show more content…
People also had the notion that the earth was at the center of the universe and everything revolved around it. Both Kepler and Copernicus had the idea that the sun was at the center of planetary motion (Applebaum 31). Copernicus hypothesized that the rotation of the earth was what caused the appearance of the earth being at the center of the universe (Principe 47). He did not, however, write down this theory in fear of being punished by the church (Henderson 25). At first, his theories were rejected as they contradicted common knowledge (Principe 50). According to Copernicus, the earth revolved, rotated, and the axis was tilted (Applebaum 24). Newton’s laws of universal gravitation explained the motion of the earth and the solar system (Principe 65). All objects have a gravitational force that is different than the force of others (Hall 261). Kepler made three laws as well that helped explain …show more content…
In this system, there were six planets observable with the naked eye (Applebaum 25). Galileo observed that there was more than one center as the planets orbited the sun and the moons orbited the planets (Rezende 89). Nicholas of Casa reasoned that all the stars in the universe were also suns that may have had their own planetary system (Krebs 23). Thomas Diggers suggested that the stars were arranged in a scattered manner rather than in a sphere (Williams 49). John Flamsteed was able to determine the position of the stars more accurately than any other scientist before him (Baigrie 55). Nicholas of Casa had the notion of an “infinite universe” where nothing is fixed (Krebs