tycho brahe essays

tycho brahe essays Tycho Brahe was a sixteenth century Danish Astronomer. He revolutionized the study of astronomy before the invention of the telescope. He discovered information that was in disagreement with Aristotelian and Ptolemaic systems. He designed and built several instruments that recorded positions and measurements of the stars. Without his discoveries and observations we would be far behind where we are today in the study of the heavens. Brahe was born on December 14, 1546 in Skane Denmark. He attended the universities of Copenhagen, Leipzig, Wittenberg, Rostock, and Basel. He was originally in school to study philosophy and law. However, when at Copenhagen, he witnessed a predicted eclipse of the sun that took place on schedule. He was enthralled by something divine that men should know the motions of the stars so accurately that they were able a long time beforehand to predict their places and relative positions. This changed his interest from the law to astronomy. When he went to Leipzig, he was obsessed with astronomy. He his books and instruments from his tutor and stayed up each night observing the stars. When he was seventeen, he witnessed Jupiter and Saturn passing very close to one another. He checked the tables to see the prediction of when this event should have occured and saw that the Alfonsine tables were off by a month and the Copernican tables were off by several days. He decided that much better tables could be constructed by more accurate observation of the exact positions of planets over an extended period of time. Telescopes had not yet been invented, so the only way to measure the positions of the stares was to build large quadrants to get lines of sight on stars. It took twenty men to set up a large quadrant, which was part of a circle with a nineteen foot radius. It was graduated in sixtieths of a degree. This quadrant was the beginning of Brahes official observations. On ...