In around 250 BC a bold scholar,
Aristarchus of Samos, risked execution by stating that the Earth was not the centre of the universe.
Aristarchus of Samos (310-230 B.C.) proposed in ancient Greece a sun-centered system.
Next the Sun:
Aristarchus of Samos noted that when the Moon appeared exactly half sunlit, as best as he could judge by eyeballing it, the Moon was 87[degrees] from the Sun in the sky.
now declares to visitors the presence of the author of the heliocentric theory." Not everyone agrees; while visiting the little town of Karlovasi, Greece, my wife and I saw a statue honoring the discoverer of the heliocentric system,
Aristarchus of Samos. The inscription on its marble pedestal read, "Copernicus copied Aristarchos 1530 A.D." (see photo at right).
So he selects a competing world system put forward by his elder contemporary
Aristarchus of Samos. Archimedes describes a book in which Aristarchus "hypothesizes that the fixed stars and the sun remain unmoved; that the earth is borne around the sun on the circumference of a circle ...
Aristarchus of Samos: The Ancient Copernicus Thomas Heath (Dover Publications, Inc., 2004).
By the end of the second chapter, Copernicus and
Aristarchus of Samos are finally vindicated by the trio Friedrich Bessel, Thomas Henderson, and Wilhelm Struve, who each independently made the first parallax measurements of nearby stars.