Renaissance, which means "rebirth" was the cultural movement in Europe from the fourteenth century to the seventeenth century. During the Renaissance, astronomy was founded by a famous astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus. In the Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, Nicolaus Copernicus is introduced as followed: "Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), the Polish cathedral canon, was the greatest astronomer of the first half of the sixteenth century and initiated a revolution in astronomy" (Astronomy). Besides Nicolaus Copernicus, there were also some well-known astronomers such as Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei at that time. Because of the Renaissance, lots of scholars and translators did a lot of research on some ancient works written by Greek or Roman for the revival of the ancient culture, which eventually leads to a number of famous basic astronomical theorems or principles such as heliocentric theory and Kepler's law of planetary motion. Renaissance was also a period with an unprecedented explosion of mathematical ideas. And some development of mathematics just in time helped development of astronomy during the Renaissance. For example, the discovery of logarithm just in time refined Johannes Kepler's theorem. Why so many great astronomical advances were achieved during the Renaissance but not before or after the Renaissance? In brief, ancient Greek astronomy sources, outstanding translators and helpful mathematicians were three key factors that promote the development of astronomy during the Renaissance. .
Ancient Greek astronomy sources are one of the key factors that promoted the development of astronomy. During the Renaissance, the cultural rebirth was based on the revival of the Greek and Roman works. So it is not a coincidence that astronomy was founded and developed. There were two very important ancient Greek books that contribute to the development of astronomy, which are Ptolemy's Almagest written in second century and Euclid's Element written in 300 B.
