Planets and moons in Wright's theory of the universe. The planets shown here are Jupiter (top) and Saturn (bottom) with their moons, along with the inner planets across centre (from left: Mars, Venus, Earth, Mercury). The Earth's Moon is also shown at centre. This page is from 'An original theory or new hypothesis of the Universe' (1750) by English astronomer Thomas Wright (1711-1786). In this book Wright gave the first explanation of the appearance of the Milky Way as being due to our immersion in a layer of stars. He proposed that the Sun is one of many stars orbiting around a Divine Centre and that the stars are distributed either in annuli (rings) or in thin, concentric, spherical shells.