ABSTRACT
Tycho Brahe opposed the Copernican heliocentric hypothesis in large part because of the issue of star sizes within that hypothesis. He noted that in order for the stars to be both at the distance required by Copernicus, and to have the apparent sizes they do as seen from Earth, then the stars would have to be enormous—every last one would have to be comparable to the size of the solar system. This he found absurd, when in a geocentric universe the stars could lie just beyond the planets, and be of a size commensurate with the other celestial bodies. Brahe’s objection held up even following the advent of the telescope. A number of Copernicans embraced the giant stars as being an illustration of the power of an infinite God, whereas various anti-Copernicans rejected this conceptualization, and the giant stars, as absurd. Among the Copernicans who embraced the giant stars was Johannes Kepler, who wrote poetically of the giant stars and the tiny Earth as reflecting both the power of God to create the largest things, and God’s concern for the smallest things. Kepler illustrates the reach of the idea that the Copernican stars illustrated God’s power—an idea generally overlooked in studies of the debate over the Copernican hypothesis.
