Brahe,
Tycho (1546 - 1601)
Tycho Brahe (14 December 1546 – 24 October 1601),
born Tyge Ottesen Brahe,was a Danish nobleman known for
his accurate and comprehensiveastronomical
and planetary observations.
He was born in Scania, then part of Denmark, now part of modern-day
Sweden. Tycho was well known in his lifetime as an astronomer and alchemist.
His work as an astronomer was
remarkably accurate for his time. Most importantly, it had a most significant
impact which remains today.
In his De nova stella (On the new star) of 1573, he refuted
the Aristotelian belief in an unchanging celestial realm. His
precise measurements indicated that "new stars" (novae or also now known as supernovae), in
particular that of
1572, lacked the parallaxexpected in sub-lunar phenomena, and
were therefore not "atmospheric" tail-less comets as previously believed, but occurred above
the atmosphere and moon. Using similar measurements he showed that comets were
also not atmospheric phenomena, as previously thought, and must pass through
the supposed "immutable" celestial
spheres.
Source: wikipedia, NASA
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