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It is Tycho Brahé. He raised the name of Denmark to the stars, and was rewarded with injury, loss, and sorrow. He is going to a strange country. "The vault of heaven is above me everywhere," he says, "and what do I want more?" And away sails the famous Dane, the astronomer, to live honoured and free in a strange land.
Michel Ardan, to qualify it, employed all the metaphors his imagination could furnish him with. To him Tycho was an ardent focus of light, a centre of irradiation, a crater vomiting flames! It was the axle of a fiery wheel, a sea-star encircling the disc with its silver tentacles, an immense eye darting fire, a nimbo made for Pluto's head!
These statements, especially those relating to the length of the streaks, are utterly opposed to prevailing notions, but Professor Pickering specifies the case of the two familiar parallel rays extending from the north-east of Tycho to the region east of Bullialdus.
Sirius never rises very high above the horizon. Kepler's star's greatest height above the horizon was little more than three-fourths of this, or equal to about the sun's elevation at midday on January 13 or 14 in any year. Like Tycho Brahe's star, Kepler's was brighter even than Jupiter, and only fell short of Venus in splendour.
He sent copies of his book to several leading astronomers, of whom Galileo praised his ingenuity and good faith, while Tycho Brahe was evidently much struck with the work and advised him to adapt something similar to the Tychonic system instead of the Copernican.
Tycho was not in all respects free from the superstitions of his time and who is? but he had the true scientific instinct, and immediately he began to study the stranger, and to record with the greatest care every change in its aspect.
For the book was a book of ballads, about the deeds of knights and champions, and men of huge sature; ballads which from time immemorial had been sung in the North, and which some two centuries before the time of which I am speaking had been collected by one Anders Vedel, who lived with a certain Tycho Brahe, and assisted him in making observations upon the heavenly bodies, at a place called Uranias Castle, on the little island of Hveen, in the Cattegat.
We trace the progress of astronomy through Hipparchus and Ptolemy; and, after a long halt, through Copernicus, Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler; while from the high table-land of thought occupied by these men, Newton shoots upwards like a peak, overlooking all others from his dominant elevation. But other objects than the motions of the stars attracted the attention of the ancient world.
Investigation shows that the records more probably refer to comets, but even if the objects seen were temporary stars, their dates do not suit the hypothesis; from 945 to 1264 there is a gap of 319 years, and from 1264 to 1572 one of only 308 years; moreover 337 years have now elapsed since Tycho saw the last glimmer of his star.
The life of Tycho had been passed, as we have seen, in the accumulation of vast stores of careful observations of the positions of the heavenly bodies. It was not given to him to deduce from his splendid work the results to which they were destined to lead.
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