His life
-Danish aristocrat and astronomer
-Studied at Copenhagen University and Leipzig University in Denmark, where he was born.
-Later he studied at the universities of Wittenberg, Rostock and Basel while travelling through Germany.
-While studying, he took interest in alchemy and astronomy and started investing in observation tools.
-Back in Denmark, he was funded by the King to create the laboratory, Uraniborg, in which Brahe spent almost all of his career working out of. At the time was the finest laboratory in all of Europe.
-A few years before his death in 1601 he left and settled down in Prague as the Imperial Mathematician of court.
Role in Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment
-He was passionate about improving observation technologies and designed, built and calibrated new instruments that would lead to more accurate observations about the cycles of the moon and the planets.
Major Works
-Discovery of a new star(actually a supernova), Cassiopeia in 1572
-Discovery of a comet and its orbit between Mars and Venus in 1577
-His model of the solar system(Tychonic Universe) brought the two solar models of the time together into one. The Earth is the centre of the universe where the moon and sun orbit the Earth, but all planets orbit the Sun.
-Tycho was the first astronomer to study full orbits of the planets
Impact on Society/Legacy
-His planetary model was wrong and his work did not survive after his death, but he set new standards for precise observations and measurements.
-The observations Tycho made on the positions of the planets and Earth’s moon and their orbits helped the realization and discovery that they orbit elliptically rather than circularly.
