United States or Gibraltar ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Soon we passed the little Swedish town of Carlscrona, and the desolate island Hveen, on which Tycho de Brahe passed the greater portion of his life, occupied with stellar observations and calculations.
The attention of the public had been long fixed on a great eclipse of the sun, which was to happen on the 21st August 1560; and as in those days a phenomenon of this kind was linked with the destinies of nations as well as of individuals, the interest which it excited was as intense as it was general. Tycho watched its arrival with peculiar anxiety.
Of what this incomparable mountain really is, with all these lines of projections converging towards it and with all these prominent points of relief protruding within its crater, photography has, so far, been able to give us only a very unsatisfactory idea. The reason too is very simple: it is only at Full Moon that Tycho reveals himself in all his splendor.
But the phenomena of variable stars, with all their apparent irregularity of motion and fluctuations in luminosity, are now being traced to definite and well-determined laws of motion, if not of light, while the theory of extinguished and disappearing stars belongs exclusive to the age of Tycho Brahe.
You may see Tycho's effigy over his tomb in the Tyn Church; you may remark that his effigy shows little trace of a nose to his face. Tycho went without one for many years, as he lost his when young, in a duel. Keppler was also one of Rudolph's guests, a man of very different calibre, and certainly one of the most eminent astronomers of all times.
It has often seemed to me that a large part of the mischief for let it be remembered that the published errors of the paradoxist are indicative of much unpublished misapprehension arises from the undeserved contempt with which our books of astronomy too often treat the labours of Ptolemy, Tycho Brahe, and others who advocated erroneous theories.
Tycho was justly irritated at this unprincely conduct, and ordered this anecdote to be inserted in the description of Uraniburg which he was now preparing for publication. In the year 1592, Tycho lost his distinguished friend and correspondent the Prince of Hesse, and astronomy one of its most active and intelligent cultivators.
But Tycho Brahe was eminently a practical observer, and took little part in theory; and his observations formed so essential a portion of the system of Kepler that it is only fair to include his name among these who laid the foundations of the solar system which we accept to-day.
In this "City of the Heavens," still dependent solely upon the unaided eye as a collector of starlight, Tycho made those invaluable observations that enabled Kepler to deduce the true laws of planetary motion. But after all these centuries the sidereal world embraced no objects, barring an occasional comet or temporary star, that lay beyond the vision of the earliest astronomers.
To the naked eye the moon's face appears variegated with dusky patches, while a few points of superior brilliance shine amid the brighter portions, especially in the southern and eastern quarters, where immense craters like Tycho and Copernicus are visible to a keen eye, gleaming like polished buttons.
Word Of The Day