 According to <unk> <unk> , the <unk> astronomer Ibn <unk> proposed that the Milky Way was made up of many stars that almost touched one another and appeared to be a continuous image due to the effect of refraction from <unk> material , citing his observation of the conjunction of Jupiter and Mars on 500 AH ( <unk> / 1107 AD ) as evidence . Early European astronomers such as <unk> <unk> identified new stars in the night sky ( later termed novae ) , suggesting that the heavens were not immutable . In <unk> <unk> Bruno suggested that the stars were like the Sun , and may have other planets , possibly even Earth @-@ like , in orbit around them , an idea that had been suggested earlier by the ancient Greek philosophers , <unk> and <unk> , and by medieval Islamic <unk> such as <unk> al @-@ Din al @-@ <unk> . By the following century , the idea of the stars being the same as the Sun was reaching a consensus among astronomers . To explain why these stars exerted no net gravitational pull on the Solar System , Isaac Newton suggested that the stars were equally distributed in every direction , an idea prompted by the theologian Richard Bentley . 
