Does anybody know any information about this astronomer Tycho Brahe?

Question

I have a report due on him tomorrow and i dont know anything about him!!! I looked on google and it didnt really help...

Answer 1

Two amusing things:

His nose was made of gold (the real one was cut off in a duel).

He died when his bladder burst. Evidently it was rude to ask to go pee when at a king's party. Tycho drank too much.

As for his science and his effect on Kepler, just do your own work.

Answer 2

Tycho Brahe (1546-1601)

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 (e.g., opposition, quadrature, station), 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.

Answer 3

Danish Astronomer. 1546-1601.

Observed the Supernova of 1572 and published the book ”De Nova Stella” the year after. This made him famous in all of Europe. In the book he proved that the new star was farther away than the moon. This was significant because this disproved the previous theory by Aristotle that everything outside the moon’s orbit was eternal and constant. The Geocentric world system was shaken.

The Danish king Frederik II (ruled 1559-1588) gave him the island Hven (pronounced ‘Vein’) on which he built an observatory called “Uranienborg.” He worked there for about 20 years with the best instruments of his time. Many of his own design.

In 1577 he observed a large comet. He found that this also was outside the Moon’s orbit and also that it passed through the crystal spheres believed to exists, without these breaking. Aristotles theory was disproved once again.

The comet observations was published in 1588 in the book “De Mundi Aetheri Recentioribus Phaenomenis” in which he also published his own world system, which for a long time competed with Copernicus’ system. The observation techniques of the time made it impossible to determine whether Copernicus’ or Brahe’s system was correct. Brahe’s system, which kept Earth as the centre, appealed to the Catholic church.

The new king, Christian IV (ruled 1588-1648) made life difficult for Brahe - Hven was taken from him in 1597 and he moved to Copenhagen. Here he was harassed until he left Denmark for Germany. Here he published “Astronomia Instauratae Mechanica,” resulting in a position in Prague as a Mathematician for the Emperor. He arrived in 1599 and lived there until his death in 1601.

In Prague he started working with Johannes Kepler, who inherited his notes. The observations of Mars’ orbit was the foundation for Kepler’s discovery: That the planets move in ellipses, not circles.

Tycho Brahe was way ahead of his time regarding observation methods. In a time when the telescope was not yet invented he made observations with unheard of precision.

Also famous for his silver nose, as he lost his own in a duel.

Answer 4

No one knows how to pronounce his name, some say TEE-KO Some say TIE-KO. He was also known as Goldennose, or The Man with the Golden Nose. He was an arch-villain whose desire for power and notoriety led to his plot to cover the whole world in the dark of ignorance of the true Copernican nature of our solar system. His plots were thwarted by secret agent 0 - 0 - VII , otherwise known as Kepler, Johannes Kepler. Secret agent Kepler manages to steal the top secret plans detailing the orbital position of Mars out from under the very golden nose of Tycho. (Actually Tycho was dead already, were other agents involved?) From these plans, agent Kepler was able to save the world and restore order to the universe by demonstrating among other things that the sun was the center of the solar system and the planets orbited the sun..

Answer 5

*** g05 3/8 pp. 24-26 The Man Who Unlocked the Secrets of the Solar System ***

The Man Who Unlocked the Secrets of the Solar System

BY AWAKE! WRITER IN GERMANY

SIXTEENTH-CENTURY Europeans regarded comets with awe. So when a comet made famous by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe was visible in the night sky, Katharina Kepler got her six-year-old son, Johannes, out of bed to see it. Over 20 years later, when Brahe died, whom did Emperor Rudolf II appoint to replace him as imperial mathematician? At 29 years of age, Johannes Kepler became the imperial mathematician to the Holy Roman Emperor, a position he held for the rest of his life.

Mathematics is not the only science in which Kepler is held in high esteem. He distinguished himself in the fields of optics and astronomy. Kepler, small in stature, had an astonishing intellect and also a resolute character. He suffered discrimination when he would not convert to Roman Catholicism, even under great pressure.

Mathematical Genius

Johannes Kepler was born in 1571 in Weil der Stadt, a small town on the edge of the German Black Forest. The family was poor, but scholarships from the local nobility secured Johannes a good education. He studied theology at the University of Tübingen, as he planned to become a Lutheran minister. But his genius for mathematics was recognized. When in 1594 a mathematics teacher at the Lutheran high school in Graz, Austria, died, Kepler replaced him. While there, he published his first major work, Cosmographic Mystery.

The astronomer Brahe had spent years keeping a painstaking record of planetary observations. When he read Cosmographic Mystery, Brahe was impressed with Kepler’s grasp of mathematics and astronomy, and he invited Kepler to join him in Benátky, near Prague, now in the Czech Republic. Kepler accepted the invitation when religious intolerance forced him to leave Graz. And, as described previously, when Brahe died, Kepler succeeded him. In place of a meticulous observer, the imperial court now had a mathematical genius.

Milestone in Optics

To benefit fully from Brahe’s collection of planetary observations, Kepler needed to understand more about the refraction of light. How is reflected light coming from a planet refracted when entering the earth’s atmosphere? Kepler’s explanations were contained in Supplement to Witelo, Expounding the Optical Part of Astronomy, which expanded on the work of the medieval scientist Witelo. Kepler’s book was a milestone in optics. He was the first man to explain the workings of the eye.

Kepler’s main pursuit was not optics, however, but astronomy. Early astronomers believed the sky to be a hollow globe with stars stuck to the inner surface like sparkling diamonds. Ptolemy viewed the earth as the center of the universe, whereas Copernicus believed the planets all revolved around a stationary sun. Brahe suggested that the other planets revolved around the sun, which in turn orbited the earth. Since in relation to the earth, all other planets were heavenly bodies, they were viewed as perfect. The only form of motion considered appropriate for them was a perfect circle, each planet traveling at a constant speed. This was the environment in which Kepler took up his work as imperial mathematician.

Beginnings of Modern Astronomy

Equipped with Brahe’s tables of planetary observations, Kepler studied cosmic movements and drew conclusions based on what he saw. His genius with figures was matched by a strong will and a restless curiosity. His voracious capacity for work is evidenced by the 7,200 complex calculations he completed in studying the observation tables of Mars.

And it was Mars that first caught Kepler’s eye. Punctilious study of the tables revealed that Mars orbited the sun but not in a circle. The only orbital shape that fitted the observations was an ellipse with the sun as one of its foci. Kepler sensed, however, that the key to unlocking the secrets of the heavens was, not Mars, but planet Earth. According to Professor Max Caspar, “Kepler’s inventiveness moved him to a touch of genius.” He put the tables to an unconventional use. Instead of using them to investigate Mars, Kepler imagined himself standing on Mars looking back at the earth. He calculated that the speed of the earth varied in inverse proportion to its distance from the sun.

Kepler now understood that the sun is not simply the center of the solar system. The sun also acts like a magnet, rotating on its own axis and exercising a force on the movement of the planets. Caspar writes: “This was the grand new concept that guided him from then on in his research and led him to the discovery of his laws.” To Kepler the planets were all physical bodies harmoniously governed by a uniform set of laws. What he learned from Mars and Earth must be true of all planets. He thus concluded that each planet travels around the sun in an elliptic orbit at a speed that varies in relation to its distance from the sun.

Answer 6

he made some really cool radio control cars.

Answer 7

www.wikipedia.org