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In Copernicus's period, astrology's main focus was to provide a description of the stars and that would create accurate horoscopes and annual forecasts and predictions. There was general agreement that the Moon and Sun encircled the motionless Earth and that Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn were situated beyond the Sun in that order. In the Commentariolus, Copernicus believed that, if the Sun is assumed to be at rest and if the Earth is assumed to be in motion, then the other planets fall into an orderly relationship whereby their sidereal periods [times measured by the stars] increase from the Sun as follows: Mercury-- 88 days, Venus--225 days, Earth--1 year, Mars--1.9 years, Jupiter--12 years, and Saturn--30 years. Copernicus' theory did raise disagreement and numerous questions and in order to accept the theory's conclusion, one had to abandon much of Aristotelian natural philosophy and develop a new one to understand why heavy bodies fall to a moving Earth.
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