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Astronomy: Tycho Brahe
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Tyge (Latinized as Tycho) Brahe was born on 14 December 1546 in Skane, then in Denmark (now part of Sweden). He attended the universities of Copenhagen and Leipzig, and then traveled through the German region, studying at the universities of Wittenberg, Rostock, and Basel. During this period his interest in alchemy and astronomy was aroused, and he purchased several astronomical instruments. In a duel with another student, in Wittenberg in 1566, Tycho lost a part of his nose. For the rest of his life he wore a metal insert over the missing part. He returned to Denmark in 1570. And in 1572 Tycho observed the new star in Cassiopeia A and published his findings in the following year in "De Nova et Nullius Aevi Memoria Prius Visa Stella" (On the New and Never Previously Seen Star), Copenhagen 1573. After another tour in Germany in the year 1574 , Tycho accepted an offer from the King Frederick II to fund an observatory. He was given the little island of Hven in the Sont near Copenhagen, and there he built his observatory, Uraniburg, which became the finest observatory in Europe of that time. At the Uraniburg observatory he made the most precise observations that had yet been made by devising the best instruments available before the invention of the telescope. His observations of planetary motion, particularly that of Mars, provided the crucial data for later astronomers like Kepler to construct our present model of the solar system. Furthermore Brahe made careful observations of a comet in 1577, calculating that it was further away than the Moon. Therefore the heavens were not immutable (perfect and unchanging) as Aristotle had argued and philosophers still believed. The heavens were changeable and therefore the Aristotelian division between the heavenly and earthly regions came under attack (Galileo Galilei also attacked Aristotle's unchanging heavens in 1604) and was eventually dropped After a falling out with King Christian IV, Tycho packed up his instruments and books in 1597 and left Denmark. After traveling several years, he settled in Prague in 1599 as the Imperial Mathematician at the court of Emperor Rudolph II. He died in 1601. Related subjects>> Supernova Cassiopeia A>> Galileo Galilei >> Nicholas Copernicus |
 Tycho Brahe  Tycho Brahe didn't completely believe in the heliocentric planetary arrangement proposed by Nicholas Copernicus in 1543. But he also didn't completely agree to the old ideas of the perfect and unchanging heavens by Aristotle. This sketch in the middle of both theories later proved to be wrong, but for a time it was commonly believed with the Earth as the center of the Universe. |
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