02/11/2025
Copernicus crater is such a beautiful crater. Featuring lovely splatter marks caused by an ancient unfortunate encounter with a rogue piece of something else (maybe aliens) some 800 million years ago. Copernicus was a bit of a rogue himself.
In the 15th and 16th Century when he was around, the everyday view of the universe was that Earth sat in the centre of a universe that moved around it. The sun, the moon and all the other celestial bodies moved around our little planet amongst a star field that lay beyond.
Copernicus knew something wasn’t quite right… inspired by the works of a Greek astronomer, Aristarchus of Samos some 1800 years before, and using the math of Islamic astronomers, he began to pick the long healed scab of the structure of the cosmos. The heliocentric (sun centred) theory of our cosmos then began bursting back to life!
A haemorrhage of new science began to flow which would have got him into quite a bit of trouble, so he saved it for his death bed. The world wasn’t quite ready to hear this yet, not least until Galileo came along with his new magic “make closer machine” a little while later. All the while Copernicus’ theories were kept warm for Galileo by Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler.
However, Copernicus didn’t act alone, but that’s a story for another time 🤷✨
