FREE ESSAY ON TYCHO BRAHE

TYCHO BRAHE

Tycho Brahe
Tyge (Latinized as Tycho) Brahe was born on 14 December 1546 in Skane, then in Denmark,
now in Sweden. He was the eldest son of Otto Brahe and Beatte Bille, both from families
in the high nobility of Denmark. He was brought up by his paternal uncle Jorgen Brahe and
became his heir. He attended the universities of Copenhagen and Leipzig, and then
traveled through the German region, studying further at the universities of Wittenberg,
Rostock, and Basel. During this period his interest in alchemy and astronomy was aroused,
and he bought several astronomical instruments.
In 1572 Tycho observed the new star in Cassiopeia and published a brief tract about it
the following year. In 1574 he gave a course of lectures on astronomy at the University
of Copenhagen. He was now convinced that the improvement of astronomy hinged on accurate
observations. After another tour of Germany, where he visited astronomers, 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. 
Tycho designed and built new instruments, calibrated them, and instituted nightly
observations. He also ran his own printing press. The observatory was visited by many
scholars, and Tycho trained a generation of young astronomers there in the art of
observing. 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 there
in 1601. His instruments were stored and eventually lost. Tycho Brahe's contributions to
astronomy were enormous. He not only designed and built instruments, he also calibrated
them and checked their accuracy periodically. He thus revolutionized astronomical
instrumentation. He also changed observational practice profoundly. Whereas earlier
astronomers had been content to observe the positions of planets and the Moon at certain
important points of their orbits. Tycho and his cast of assistants
observed these bodies throughout their orbits. As a result, a number of orbital anomalies
never
before noticed were made explicit by Tycho. Without these complete series of observations
of
unprecedented accuracy, Kepler could not have discovered that planets move in elliptical
orbits.
Tycho was also the first astronomer to make corrections for atmospheric refraction*. In
general,
whereas previous astronomers made observations accurate to perhaps 15 arc minutes, those
of
Tycho were accurate to perhaps 2 arc minutes, and it has been shown that his best
observations
were accurate to about half an arc minute. 
Tycho's observations of the new star of 1572 and comet of 1577, and his publications on
these phenomena, were instrumental in establishing the fact that these bodies were above
the Moon and that therefore the heavens were not immutable 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 (see, for instance,
Galileo's Dialogue) and was eventually dropped. Further, if comets were in the heavens,
they moved through the heavens. Up to now it had been believed that planets were carried
on material spheres (spherical shells) that fit tightly around each other. Tycho's
observations showed that this arrangement was impossible because comets moved through
these spheres. Celestial spheres faded out of existence between 1575 and 1625. 
Tycho developed a system that combined the best of both worlds. He kept the Earth in the
center of the universe, so that he could retain Aristotelian physics The Moon and Sun
revolved about the Earth, and the shell of the fixed stars was centered on the Earth. But
Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn revolved about the Sun. He put the (circular)
path of the comet of 1577 between Venus and Mars. This Tychonic world system became
popular early in the seventeenth century among those who felt forced to reject the
Ptolemaic arrangement of the planets (in which the Earth was the center of all motions)
but who, for various reasons, could not accept the Copernican alternative.
Tycho's major works include De Nova et Nullius Aevi Memoria Prius Visa Stella (On the New
and Never Previously Seen Star) (Copenhagen, 1573); De Mundi Aetherei Recentioribus
Phaenomenis (Concerning the New Phenomena in the Ethereal World) (Uraniburg, 1588);
Astronomiae Instauratae Mechanica (Instruments for the Restored Astronomy) (Wandsbeck,
1598; English tr. Copenhagen, 1946); Astronomiae Instauratae Progymnasmata (Introductory
Exercises Toward a Restored Astronomy) (Prague 1602). His observations were not
published
during his lifetime.