Copernicus Portrait

Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance astronomer and the first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology, which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe.

I wanted to create a concentric portrait featuring the planets. In my initial ignorance I thought Galileo was the scientist who originally suggested the sun as the center of our universe. After some wiki-research I discovered out that Copernicus, the Polish/Prussian/German Astronomer and Catholic clerk, was the one who founded heliocentric cosmology and Galileo, the Italian Physicist, created the telescopes that helped prove the theory.

In the time of Copernicus, astronomers noticed that the stars moved in a fixed motion but there were five 'wandering' stars that seemed to move in their own paths. The word planet is greek for 'Wandering Star.' In my illustration, I only used the planets that could be seen in Copernicus' time. You may also notice that Saturn does not have rings. They could not see the rings that have become iconic for that particular planet.