Astronomy: The Heavenly Challenge

Summary

As optics improved, man began to see the solar system. Tycho Brahe in Denmark, Nicolaus Copernicus of Poland, Johannes Kepler of Germany, and Italy’s Galileo Galilei all began to see a new relationship between the world and the stars. Their questions, and their non-religious answers, toppled the idea that man—and the Church—are at the center of the universe.

The Science and Discovery Series recreates history’s four-thousand-year journey of scientific progress. Science has often challenged and upset conventional wisdom. This is a story of vested interests and independent thinkers, experiments and theories, change and progress. Aristotle, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein all make appearances.