Dispelling myths and highlighting history of the heliocentric model

I suggest an additional myth to Mano Singham’s delightful account. That is the myth that the heliocentric theory was conceived by Copernicus with no precedent. In the third century BC, Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos postulated the theory. He had correctly calculated the size of the Moon and its distance from Earth. He also calculated the Sun’s size and its distance from Earth, but his results for the Sun were far wrong because he lacked instruments to correctly obtain an angular measurement. Nevertheless, those calculations apparently led him to the idea that Earth revolves around the Sun. Aristarchus also concluded that the fixed stars were almost infinitely far away, and he thus explained the lack of parallax in our solar circumnavigation. So he essentially had the big picture.

Copernicus mentioned Aristarchus in earlier versions of his text, but he later deleted such mention.