Nicolaus Copernicus was the man who discovered earth as merely among planets that revolved around the sun. He presented a model of the solar system that was heliocentric in nature. This later became among the few established facts about earth’s discovery. Galileo later confirmed Copernicus’ statement.
Aristarchus was the first person to hold that the Sun rather than the Earth is at the center of the planetary system, that all the planets go around the Sun rather than the Earth. From the size of the Earth's shadow on the Moon during a lunar eclipse, he deduced that the Sun had to be much larger than the Earth, as well as very far away.It is the same idea we associate with the name of Copernicus, whom Galileodescribed as 'the restorer and confirmer', not the inventor, of the heliocentric hypothesis. For most of the 1,800 years between Aristarchus and Copernicus nobody knew the correct disposition of the planets, even though it had been laid out perfectly clearly around 280 B.C..
