Saint Tycho

Biography

Tycho Brahe, generally called Tycho for short, was a Danish astronomer born on December 14, 1546, and died on October 24, 1601. Known for his comprehensive and unprecedentedly accurate astronomical observations, he helped turn astronomy into the first modern science and launched the Scientific Revolution. Tycho is renowned for noticing a completely new star in 1572 that was brighter than any star or planet, leading him to devote himself to creating ever more accurate instruments of measurement over the next fifteen years (1576–1591). King Frederick II granted Tycho an estate on the island of Hven and the money to build Uraniborg, the first large observatory in Christian Europe. He later worked underground at Stjerneborg, where he realized that his instruments in Uraniborg were not sufficiently steady. Tycho was well educated and worked to combine what he saw as the geometrical benefits of Copernican heliocentrism with the philosophical benefits of the Ptolemaic system, devising the Tychonic system. In 1597, forced by the new king, Christian IV, to leave Denmark, Tycho was invited to Prague and became the official imperial astronomer, building an observatory at Benátky nad Jizerou. He died in 1601, assisted for a year by Johannes Kepler, who later used his data to develop his own three laws of planetary motion.