14 The Birth of Modern Astronomy
![Image of a statue of Astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus holding model of Heliocentric Solar System.](http://cel.fscj.edu/LUMENS/ast-1002-package/img/figure-14-nicolasCopernicus.jpg)
The Copernican Revolution was based on the works of four men — Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo.
Nicolaus (or Nicolas) Copernicus was a Polish astronomer who believed there were too many errors in the Ptolemaic Geocentric Universe. Copernicus noted, as did some others, that Ptolemy’s “retrograde” was too complicated. So Copernicus developed a Sun-Centered Solar System, that is, a Heliocentric Solar System .