Science, technology, and Society

(GE 10)

Report

BSCE – 1C Ms. Myniel Gal

Tycho Brahe was born in
Denmark in 1546 to a noble
family.

At the age of 2 he was

kidnapped by his uncle
Jorges Brahe.
At the age of 14 his interest
in astronomy has been
awaken.

Few years later, Tycho was

sent in Germany to
continue his study in law.
At the age of 20, he lost in a
sword duel with his
classmates over who was
the better mathematician.
6 years later, he discovered
a new star, in the
constellation of Cassiopeia,
which is the Supernova. Supernova
Brahe had been hired by
King Frederick II of
Denmark, who gave him an
entire island in Hven. There
he build an observatory
called Uraniborg.

Quadrant and
Paper Mill and Printing Press
Lab for Alchemy
Sextants Armillary Sphere
When King Christian IV
was elected as the new
king of Denmark. Brahe was
been exiled in his own
country.
He goes to Prague, where
he became the Official
Imperial Mathematician to Holy Roman
Holy Roman Emperor Emperor Rodulph II
Rodulph II.
Johannes Kepler became
his assistant.

In 1601, he meet the cause

of his death by refusing to
leave the banquette to
relieve himself.

Johannes Kepler
Tycho Brahe’s body was
been exhumed and studied
in 2010.
TYCHO BRAHE'S OBSERVATIONS AND INSTRUME
Tycho's observations of stellar and planetary positions were
noteworthy both for their accuracy and quantity. His celestial
positions were much more accurate than those of any predecessor
or contemporary. Tycho was not a Copernican, but proposed a
"geo-heliocentric" system in which the Sun and Moon orbited the
Earth, while the other planets orbited the Sun. Although Tycho's
planetary model was soon discredited, his astronomical
observations were an essential contribution to the scientific
revolution.
TYCHO BRAHE'S OBSERVATIONS AND INSTRUME
1572 NOVAE
Nov 11, 1572 , He observed a very
bright Star which appeared in the
constellation Cassiopeia and soon
discovered that it was a fixed star known
the SN 1572 .
TYCHO BRAHE'S OBSERVATIONS AND INSTRUME
1577 COMET AND ORBITAL RECONSTRUCTION
It was a comet that passed close to Earth
during 1577 to 1578 AD. It was viewed by
people all over the Europe. Tycho drawn
the path of the comet on his planetary
system and discovered that the planetary
spheres could not be crystalline, solid
objects as assumed by Aristotle.
Shown right is a depiction of the 1577
comet observed by Tycho, which
remained visible from November 1577 to
January 1578. His observations revealed
no measurable parallax, implying that the
comet was located beyond the sphere of
the moon.
TYCHO BRAHE'S OBSERVATIONS AND INSTRUME
1577 COMET AND ORBITAL RECONSTRUCTION
The Great Comet of 1577 (official
designation: C/1577 V1) was a comet that
passed close to Earth during the year 1577 AD.
It was viewed by people all over Europe,
including the famous Danish astronomer Tycho
Brahe and Turkish astronomer Taqi ad-Din.
From his observations of the comet, Brahe was
able to discover that comets and similar
objects travel above the
Earth's atmosphere. The best fit using JPL
Horizons suggests that the comet is currently
about 320 AU from the Sun (based on 24 of
Brahe's observations spanning 74 days from 13
November 1577 to 26 January 1578).
TYCHO BRAHE'S OBSERVATIONS AND INSTRUME
THE TYCHONIAN PLANETARY MODEL
The Tychonian planetary model,
conceived by Tycho around 1583,
was an unconvincing attempt to
reintroduce geocentrism in
the "Copernican planetary system".
From his observations of the "1572
(super) nova and "1577 comet",
Tycho was convinced of the falsity
of the Ptolemaic system.
TYCHO BRAHE'S OBSERVATIONS AND INSTRUME
THE TYCHONIAN PLANETARY MODEL
From the standpoint of apparent planetary motions as
seen from Earth, this system is observationally
indistinguishable from the Copernican model, yet
maintains the fixity of the Earth. The latter belief was
held by Tycho to the end of his life, largely because he
had been unable to detect the annual parallax of the
fixed stars predicted by the Copernican model, despite
the unprecedented accuracy of the observations carried
out with his "giant instruments" at Uraniborg. Tycho
could measure parallax down to 2 minutes of arc (1/30 of
a degree); his lack of parallax detection for fixed stars
implied that the latter would have to be located 700 times
farther away than Saturn, the outermost planet known at
the time.
TYCHO BRAHE'S OBSERVATIONS AND INSTRUME
TYCHO'S INSTRUMENTS
Uraniborg was a Danish
astronomical observatory and
alchemical laboratory
established and operated by
Tycho Brahe. It was built from
1576–1580 on Hven, an island
in the Øresund between
Zealand and Scania, which at
that time was part of Denmark.
TYCHO BRAHE'S OBSERVATIONS AND INSTRUME
1576 BRASS AZIMUTHAL QUADRANT
Tycho's brass azimuthal
quadrant, 65 centimeters in
radius, was built in 1576 or
1577. It was one of the first
instruments built at Hven,
and was used for
observations of the 1577
comet. It had a estimated
accuracy of 48.8 seconds of
arc.
TYCHO BRAHE'S OBSERVATIONS AND INSTRUME
1580 GREAT GLOBE
Tycho's great globe (left), about 1.6 meter in
radius, was over 10 years in the making. This
instrument came in service in late 1580. Most of
the work involved making the hollow wooden
globe as perfectly spherical as possible, after
which it was covered in brass plates.
The globe had two primary scientific uses; it came
to be used to record the position of stars observed
by Tycho. By 1595 he had 1000 accurately
observed stars inscribed on the globe. However, it
was originally intended as a computational device.
By means of auxiliary circles, the local
azimuth/altitude coordinates, as measured with
Tycho's instruments, were converted into the
conventional celestial coordinates used to record
stellar and planetary positions.
TYCHO BRAHE'S OBSERVATIONS AND INSTRUME
1581 ARMILLARY SPHERE
An armillary sphere (variations are known
as spherical astrolabe, armilla, or armil) is a
model of objects in the sky (on the celestial
sphere), consisting of a spherical framework of
rings, centred on Earth or the Sun, that represent
lines of celestial longitude and latitude and
other astronomically important features, such as
the ecliptic. As such, it differs from a celestial
globe, which is a smooth sphere whose
principal purpose is to map the constellations. It
was invented separately in ancient
Greece and ancient China, with later use in
the Islamic world and Medieval Europe.
With the Earth as center, an armillary sphere is
known as Ptolemaic. With the Sun as center, it is
known as Copernican.
TYCHO BRAHE'S OBSERVATIONS AND INSTRUME
1582 TRIANGULAR SEXTANT
Sextants for astronomical
observations were devices
depicting a sixth of a circle,
used primarily for measuring
the positions of stars. They are
of significant historical
importance, but have been
replaced over time by transit
telescopes, astrometry techniq
ues, and satellitessuch
as Hipparcos.
TYCHO BRAHE'S OBSERVATIONS AND INSTRUME
1585 GREAT EQUATORIAL ARMILLARY
Illustration of The Great Equatorial
Armillary Instrument from Tycho Brahe's
observatory at Uraniborg, Hven, Denmark
(now Sweden). It was used for determining
the declination (celestial latitude) and right
ascension (celestial longitude) of stars.
Brahe (1546-1601) is considered the
greatest astronomical observer of the pre-
telescopic era. This illustration is from a
1602 edition of Tycho Brahe's Astronomiae
Instauratae Mechanica (Astronomical
Instruments). In this book, first published in
1598, he described the astronomical
instruments he invented and used to make
his astronomical measurements.
TYCHO BRAHE'S OBSERVATIONS AND INSTRUME
1586 REVOLVING WOODEN QUADRANT
Tycho's revolving wooden quadrant, 1.6
meter in radius, was built in 1586. It had
an estimated accuracy of 32.3 seconds
of arc, based on eight reference stars.
A quadrant is an instrument that is used
to measure angles up to 90°. Different
versions of this instrument could be
used to calculate various readings, such
as longitude, latitude, and time of day. It
was originally proposed by Ptolemy as
a better kind of astrolabe.
TYCHO BRAHE'S OBSERVATIONS AND INSTRUME
1588 REVOLVING STEEL QUADRANT
An improvement over Tycho's wooden version, his
revolving steel quadrant, 2 meters in radius, was
built in 1588. It's estimated accuracy was 36.3
seconds of arc.
Tycho left Hveen in 1597, having fallen out of favor
with the Danish King Christian IV. Upon settling in
Prague he arranged for most of his instrument to
be shipped there. After his death, legal battles
between Kepler and Tycho's heir led to the
instruments being stored away. All but Tycho's
great globe were destroyed in the aftermath of the
Bohemian civil war of 1619. The great globe found
its way back to Copenhagen, and remained in the
University's observatory tower until that tower and
all its content were destroyed by fire in 1728. All
we know from Tycho's instruments is from his
(fortunately elaborate) published writings.
TYCHO BRAHE’S GREAT STAR CATALOGUE

FIRST TRUE SUCCESSOR TO THE ALMAGEST

During the last two decades of the 16th century, Tycho Brahe (1546–1601)
exercised his exceptional ingenuity and energy to produce the first major star
catalogue since the Almagest over 1,400 years earlier. Tycho’s achievement has
been described by science historian Dennis Rawlins as ‘one of history’s
outstanding attempts at mass-perfection in the search for knowledge’

Tycho’s obsessive attention to detail resulted in a tenfold improvement in

positional accuracy over his predecessors. Working solely with naked-eye
instruments, he set new standards in celestial surveying and provided reliable
data to constellation chartmakers, for whom accurate measurements of star
positions and brightness are the essential raw material. Tycho’s star catalogue
formed the basis of the first great celestial atlas, Johann Bayer’s Uranometria,
published in 1603, two years after Tycho’s death.
Tycho’s observations came to a premature end in March 1597 when he was forced to leave his
observatory on the Danish island of Hven. Tycho circulated his results, informally known as the
‘thousand-star’ catalogue, in handwritten form in January 1598 under the title Stellarum octavi orbis
inerrantium accurata restitutio. An abridged version, containing a subset of 777 of the most
accurately determined star positions, was printed in 1602, the year after his death; it formed part of
a much larger book called Astronomiae Instauratae Progymnasmata. Tycho’s thousand-star
catalogue was eventually edited and published in 1627 by his former assistant and eventual
successor, the German mathematician Johannes Kepler. This catalogue formed part of
the Rudolphine Tables, which were primarily tables for calculating planetary positions; they were
named ‘Rudolphine’ after the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II.
Johann Bayer used Tycho’s data when plotting the stars for his Uranometria atlas of 1603. The
German astrometrist F. G. W. Argelander examined the Uranometriain 1842 and concluded that
Bayer had worked from Tycho’s 777-star catalogue of 1602, rather than the manuscript of the full
thousand-star catalogue, since the full version of the catalogue contained stars either not in
the Uranometria or for which different coordinates were given.

Tycho’s 777-star catalogue was divided into 45 constellations, as listed in the upcoming table.
Because he worked at latitude 55.9°, some 25° farther north than Ptolemy, Tycho was unable to
observe the more southerly stars in the Almagest, but he observed additional stars in most of the
other constellations. Notable examples are Cassiopeia, in which Tycho’s full catalogue lists 46 stars
versus Ptolemy’s 13; Orion, for which Tycho lists 62 stars against Ptolemy’s 38; and Ursa Major, with
56 stars against 35. He also made two amendments to the constellations recognized by Ptolemy,
listing Antinous and Coma Berenices separately whereas Ptolemy had regarded them as parts of
Aquila and Leo respectively. Antinous was eventually reabsorbed into Aquila, but Coma Berenices
continues its independent existence.

How many stars were in Tycho’s full catalogue? It depends how you count them. The number of
entries was 1,004 but that is not the whole story. After taking into account duplicates, errors, and
what Dennis Rawlins has termed ‘fakes’ (i.e. stars not properly observed but inserted to make up
the numbers), the total of separate stars genuinely recorded by Tycho and his assistants comes
down to 965
Tycho’s catalogue was a landmark in positional astronomy, widely
admired and gratefully received by fellow astronomers and celestial
map makers. But as astronomy advanced it, too, was inevitably
superseded, initially by the 1,500-star catalogue of Johannes
Hevelius (1690), also made with the naked eye, and later by the arrival
of catalogues compiled with the aid of a telescope, starting with John
Flamsteed’s Catalogus Britannicus of 1725.
 Constellations in Tycho’s 1602 catalogue
with the number of stars tabulated in each, plus those added in the full catalogue
Erichthonius [=Auriga] [Note
Aries 21 + 0 9 + 18
8]
Taurus 43 + 0 Coma Berenices 14 + 1
Gemini 25 + 4 Ophiuchus [Note 9] 15 + 22
Cancer 15 + 0 Serpens [Note 10] 13 + 0
Leo 30 + 10 Sagitta [Note 11] 5+3
Virgo 33 + 6 Vultur [= Aquila] [Note 12] 12 + 0
Libra 10 + 8 Antinous 3+4
Scorpius 10 + 0 Delphinus 10 + 0
Sagittarius 14 + 0
Equuleus [Note 13] 4+0
Capricornus 28 + 0
Pegasus [Note 14] 19 + 4
Aquarius 41 + 0 Andromeda 23 + 0
Triangulus [=
Pisces 36 + 0 4+0
Triangulum] [Note 15]
Ursa Minor, Cynosura [Note 1] 7 + 13 Cete [= Cetus] 21 + 0
Ursa Major, Helice [Note 2] 29 + 27 Orion 42 + 20
Draco 32 + 0 Eridanus 10 + 9
Cepheus 4+7 Lepus 13 + 0
Bootes, Arctophylax [Note 3] 18 + 10 Canis Major 13 + 0
Corona Borea, Gnossia [Note Canis Minor [Note 16]
8+0 2+3
4]
Argus [= Argo] [Note 17]
Hercules, Engonasi [Note 5] 28 + 0 3+8

Lyra [Note 6] 11 + 0 Hydra 19 + 5

Cygnus [Note 7] 18 + 9 Crater 3+5
Cassiopeia 26 + 20 Corvus 4+3
In the full edition, ‘Centaurus, Chiron’ was
Perseus 29 + 4
added
 Summary of Brahe's Contributions
Among the important contributions of Brahe:
1. He made the most precise observations that had yet been made by devising the best
instruments available before the invention of the telescope.

2. His observations of planetary motion, particularly that of Mars, provided the crucial data for
later astronomers like Kepler to construct our present model of the solar system.

3. He made observations of a supernova (literally: nova= "new star") in 1572 (we now know that
a supernova is an exploding star, not a new star). This was a "star" that appeared suddenly
where none had been seen before, and was visible for about 18 months before fading from
view. Since this clearly represented a change in the sky, prevailing opinion held that the
supernova was not really a star but some local phenomenon in the atmosphere (remember: the
heavens were supposed to be unchanging in the Aristotelian view). Brahe's meticulous
observations showed that the supernova did not change positions with respect to the other
stars (no parallax). Therefore, it was a real star, not a local object. This was early evidence
against the immutable nature of the heavens, although Brahe did not interpret the absence of
parallax for stars correctly, as we discuss below.
 Summary of Brahe's Contributions
4. Brahe made careful observations of a comet in 1577. By measuring the parallax for the comet, he
was able to show that the comet was further away than the Moon. This contradicted the teachings of
Aristotle, who had held that comets were atmospheric phenomena ("gases burning in the
atmosphere" was a common explanation among Aristotelians). As for the case of the supernova,
comets represented an obvious change in a celestial sphere that was supposed to be unchanging;
furthermore, it was very difficult to ascribe uniform circular motion to a comet.

5. He made the best measurements that had yet been made in the search for stellar parallax. Upon
finding no parallax for the stars, he (correctly) concluded that either
• the earth was motionless at the center of the Universe, or
• the stars were so far away that their parallax was too small to measure.
Not for the only time in human thought, a great thinker formulated a pivotal question correctly, but
then made the wrong choice of possible answers: Brahe did not believe that the stars could
possibly be so far away and so concluded that the Earth was the center of the Universe and that
Copernicus was wrong.
 Summary of Brahe's Contributions

6. Brahe proposed a model of the Solar System that

was intermediate between the Ptolemaic and
Copernican models (it had the Earth at the center).
It proved to be incorrect, but was the most widely
accepted model of the Solar System for a time.

Thus, Brahe's ideas about his data were not always

correct, but the quality of the observations
themselves was central to the development of
modern astronomy.

Sun-Centric Model
References

https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/whos_who_level2/brahe.html
http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~blackman/ast104/brahe10.html
http://www.ianridpath.com/startales/tycho.htm
https://www2.hao.ucar.edu/Education/FamousSolarPhysicists/tycho-brahes-observations-instruments
Thank You And have A Good, Blessed Day.

By: Group 2

Leader:
Bengala, Gil L.
Members:
De Guia, Lenny V.
Biasong, Ma. Engracia S.
Mabansag, Johnrey C.
Tupaz, Tomtom P.
Padua, Ralph Renard G.