heliocentric

/ˈhiliəˌsɛntrɪk/

Anything that's heliocentric has a sun at its center. Since our solar system is heliocentric, the Earth revolves around the sun (and not the other way around, as people in the Middle Ages believed).

Heliocentric has been used since the late 17th century — though Copernicus theorized that the planets revolve around the sun, rather than around the earth, in the early 1500s. Religious scholars objected strongly to this idea, and there was general resistance for over 100 years, until the science of a heliocentric model finally won out. The Greek roots of heliocentric are hēlios, "sun," and kentrikos, "pertaining to a center."

Definitions of heliocentric

1. adjective

   having the sun as or in the middle
   synonyms:

   Copernican

   according to Copernicus

   antonyms:

   geocentric

   having the earth as the center

   Ptolemaic

   of or relating to the geocentric Ptolemaic system