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How Did the Sun Get its Name?
How Did the Sun Get its Name?
Like most objects in our solar system, the sun was named after a Greek or Roman god. One of the Greek sun gods was Helios, known for bringing the sun across the sky with his chariot pulled by fire breathing horses. Helios was later renamed Sol under the Romans, and from that name we get the sun.
Anaxagoras, a Greek philosopher around 450 B.C., was the first person to suggest that the sun is actually a star, and that the other stars we see are far away suns.
Ptolemy was a Greek astronomer around 100 A.D. who developed a geocentric model of the universe.
Nicolaus Copernicus was a polish astronomer in the late 15th and early 16th century who proposed a heliocentric model of the universe.
Galileo Galilei was an Italian astronomer in the late 16th and early 17th century who built on Copernicus's heliocentric theory to continue developing a more accurate model.
Geocentric versus Heliocentric
Geocentric versus Heliocentric
The sun was not originally believed to be the center of our solar system. The first model of the universe was Ptolemy's geocentric model, meaning the Earth was at the center.
Though many supported the belief that the Earth was the center of the universe, this model failed to explain the movements of the planets. Ptolemy attempted to explain the motion of the plants through epicycles. Epicycles are small circles along the planet's orbit.
Geocentric Model
Heliocentric Model
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