How does the heliocentric model differ from the geocentric model ?
Heliocentric means “sun-centered” and is the simplest model which explains the motions of the planets around the sun. Geocentric means “earth-centered” and was the way people presumed the solar system worked before the invention of the telescope. This was reasonable then because that’s the way it *looked* (and still does), with the sun rising in the east and setting in the west every day. It was possible to describe the motions of the sun and planets using the geocentric model but it was very complicated, requiring strange assumptions like “epicycles,” which assumed that the planets moved in circles upon circles rather than ellipses around the sun.
