Well, the sun being the only object in our solar system that emits light is evidence for it being at the center.
It seems likely that there’s something special about whichever body is in the center of the solar system. A lot of astronomers thought the Earth was special for being made of rock & water, and that this was related to the Earth being at the center, but they just conjectured that Mars & Venus & the other planets were made of something else. Whereas Kepler had much more direct observations about the sun’s unique luminosity.
Aristarchus had a heliocentric model of the solar system in Ancient Greece, apparently motivated in large part by the fact that the sun was the largest object in the solar system.
In hindsight, we know that both luminosity and size relative to neighbors are both highly correlated with being at the center of a solar system, with Aristarchus’s size thing having a tighter causal relationship with centrality.
Well, the sun being the only object in our solar system that emits light is evidence for it being at the center.
It seems likely that there’s something special about whichever body is in the center of the solar system. A lot of astronomers thought the Earth was special for being made of rock & water, and that this was related to the Earth being at the center, but they just conjectured that Mars & Venus & the other planets were made of something else. Whereas Kepler had much more direct observations about the sun’s unique luminosity.
Aristarchus had a heliocentric model of the solar system in Ancient Greece, apparently motivated in large part by the fact that the sun was the largest object in the solar system.
In hindsight, we know that both luminosity and size relative to neighbors are both highly correlated with being at the center of a solar system, with Aristarchus’s size thing having a tighter causal relationship with centrality.