The revolutionary concepts that Copernicus introduced caused waves among the masses of his time– the notion that the Sun was the center of the galaxy, and not the Earth, developed into a theory known as the heliocentric theory. This theory contradicted much of the ideas and beliefs that were set in place by such institutions as the Roman Catholic Church, and differed from the “geocentric” theory, as established by Ptolemy. This theory claimed that the Earth was at the center of the universe, and stood as the example for astronomical analysis before Copernicus’ time. Shortly after publishing his work on the topic, Copernicus died, and it wasn’t until hundreds of years later that a man named Galileo Galilei used revolutionary technologies and techniques to deduce that Copernicus’ observations were correct.

Several factors came into play, in regards to the Copernicus’ ability to spread the knowledge of his discovery, one of the most primary issues being the resistance of the Roman Catholic Church to accept the ideas that he was proposing. According to an article by Russell Keck in the Galileo Project on the Rice University website, the heliocentric theory was further elaborated upon by Galileo, using the new-found technology in the telescope to predict cosmological activity (Keck, 2009). The geocentric model was predicated on the notion that the Sun and the Moon moved around the Earth in perfect circles, and technology hadn’t progressed to the point in Copernicus’ time that telescopes were readily available to track the movement of planets outside of what the naked eye could see (Keck, 2009).

According to an article on the Penn State website by Allan Brizee, the heliocentric model, amplified by the power of the telescope, evolved more so with the attention that Galileo was able to pay to it, and the accuracy of his calculations that the observation power of the telescope provided (Brizee, 2012). With the telescope, he was able to see things such as mountains on the Moon, and as the site for the Astronomy Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln states, was able to adequately describe the existence of sunspots, which played heavily into his theory on heliocentrism (Russell, 2002). This discovery was pivotal in his proposal of heliocentrism, because it helped to prove the notion of movement, in regards to the Sun. By discovering this fact, and the idea that several different parts of the Sun could be seen from differing locations, Galileo deduced that the Earth was in fact not positioned motionless in the sky, as the sole entity to which the planets orbited.

Galileo was also able to adequately track and study the various mountains and craters along the face of the Moon, the differing phases that Venus went through, and the varying moons present on Jupiter (Russell, 2002). Particularly important in his analyses of the phases of Venus was the notion that, at vary times in its orbit, Venus appears to be of a crescent shape, much similar to the way in which Earth’s moon looks like a crescent. All of these ideas supported Copernicus’ theory of heliocentrism. A major point of conflict for his developed comprehension of the galaxy was the resistance of the Roman Catholic Church to accept his claims. As a result, the church eventually placed him under a state of house arrest. According to Patrick Moore, in his piece titled “Watcher of the Stars,” Galileo originally refuted his own claims, to better appease the opinions of the church (Moore, 1973). The undeniable truth of the heliocentric model discredited the ideas of the geocentric model on several occasions, in that the phases of Venus went in accordance with the Sun’s rotation, as compared to being altered by the gravity of Earth’s.

Using the revolutionary telescope, Galileo was able to observe the distant Milky Way. Most believed the cluster to be a nebula of sorts, and it was Galileo who discovered that the nebula was a cluster of tightly-packed stars, and that it was accompanied by several other stars in the night sky. It was with the telescope that he even devised a means through which he could measure the stars in the sky. According to the New Mexico State University’s Astronomy site, Copernicus’ calculations of the galaxy provided a sound basis for the actual existence of everything in the prevalent space (Jenkins, 2007). His work provided a strong basis for the argument that the Milky Way actually extended many millions of miles beyond Earth, and even detailed the depth of Earth’s atmosphere at 32 miles (Jenkins, 2007). Galileo continued these observations and calculations, eventually figuring out a means to detect the size of stars in the night sky, even without the use of a telescope.

During his investigation of the stars in the sky, Galileo came to the conclusion that the stars themselves were very much a round shape, and from that moment onward, he reported the roundness and size of the stars through the eye of a telescope, measured in accordance to a few seconds of arc in diameter (Russell, 2002). While his calculations were very detailed, he didn’t understand to take into account factors such as diffraction and distortion, in regards to the appearance of the sun before him. As a result, he was unaware of the true sizes of the stars, or the magnitude of their representation, but regardless, the numbers that Galileo ran were much more minute than the commonly held estimates of the apparent sizes and diameters of the largest stars, made by the likes of such scientists at Tyco Brahe (Moore, 1973).

This discover of sorts did in fact allow for Galileo to provide counter arguments to the anti-Copernican thought, and made it so that he could dispute such claims by Brahe that the stars in the night sky would have to ridiculously massive for their annual parallaxes to remain undetected (Moore, 1973). The idea which was regarded as wholly true at the time was supported by the likes of men like Aristotle, who claimed that geocentric notions coincided with their understanding of space, and the movement of the stars. Galileo was responsible for publishing several works which stood vehemently against this notion, in favor of the ideas that Copernicus had developed. In general, Galileo helped to further our understanding of the world, and gravity, in several key ways, including experiments that concluded that falling bodies would continue to fall with a precise, uniform velocity, so long as the resistance of the medium through which it fell wasn’t present (Russell, 2002).

This was particularly alarming because it went against the ideas that Aristotle had created of the time, in that it contradicted the notion that heavier objects were believed to fall at a faster rate than the lighter objects, in regards to weight. Galileo performed several experiments with falling bodies on inclined planes, and did much to disprove the ideas that we held at the time, in regards to motion and inertia. His studies concluded much about the motion of the galaxy, and lent themselves to the theory of heliocentrism (Russell, 2002). In a work that he later published, Galileo would hold that objects of any various weight would fall at exactly the same rate in a vacuum, creating various formulas and postulates to further validate his claim.

Galileo’s impact on the astronomical and scientific worlds is incredibly apparent, in that he managed to help shape the opinions of the masses and disprove the scientific norms which had been established by the Roman Catholic Church, and by several other scientific sources. The studies that he conducted can be justified by the specific scientific approach that Galileo took, and the credibility that his experiments were done with. Because of Galileo’s discoveries, the world was able to realize at least the ideas of what Copernicus had been teaching, and despite the fact that it was years before the teachings were made into staples of public thought, it was because of Copernicus and Galileo that the idea of heliocentrism arose to begin with. The importance of discovering our position among the stars can be felt in nearly all fields, as it expanded our ability to perceive and understand not only our immediate world, but the galaxy and universe which exist outside of it.