Tycho Brahe Research Paper

Tycho Brahe is one of the most renowned astronomers for the accuracy of his observations. Tycho Brahe owned many magnificent observatories and made a catalogue of over 1000 stars. One of his observatories was on an island given to him by King Fredrik II. He had the most accurate methods, of his time, for charting the astronomical sky of the time and did so by inventing his own instruments. He also accurately charted the path of a comet as it traveled around the sun. He also mentored Johannes Kepler in Astronomy and when he died, Kepler received some of his observations and created laws of physics based upon these observations.
Tycho Brahe’s star catalogue was not only one of the largest star catalogues of its time, but was also the most accurate of all of the catalogues. The catalogue contains 1,028 individual stars. The catalogue also contains the description of the star’s position within its constellation figure, the star’s ecliptic longitude in degrees and arc minutes, the ecliptic latitude, also given in degrees and arc minutes but designated as North or South of the Ecliptic, and the brightness of the star, expressed in magnitudes from 1 to 6. The stars were also put into three separate groups, North, Zodiacal, and South.
Tycho Brahe was given an observatory by the king of Denmark, where he grew up as a child. With this observatory, the King of Denmark also gave Tycho Brahe sufficient funds to establish and maintain his observatory. The observatory was the best astronomical facility in Europe. The observatory contained a library which had a brass globe that had a diameter of five feet. Etched in the globe were the exact positions of fixed stars as Tycho Brahe had observed them. Also on the 2,000 acre island were several workshops where Tycho Brahe made his astronomical instruments. Tycho also built an underground observatory to protect the instruments from the wind and also allowed the roof to be opened to gain a clear view of the sky from inside the observatory. Tycho Brahe periodically checked his instruments for accuracy and would recalibrate his instruments periodically. Tycho Brahe revolutionized astronomical instrumentation.
Tycho Brahe also made careful observations about a comet in 1577. From this comet, Tycho learned that comets are above the atmosphere of the earth. He also observed that the tail of the comet always pointed away from the sun. Sketches in Tycho Brahe’s notebook indicate that the comet passed close to Venus. He observed that the comet also passed further away from the earth than the moon was, but could not accurately measure how far away the comet was.
Tycho also mentored the future famous astronomer, Johannes Kepler, who developed many laws about planetary motion. Tycho Brahe was an observationalist while Johannes Kepler was a theorist. From Tycho Brahe’s observations, Kepler was able to come up with three laws of planetary motion: The orbit of every planet is an ellipse with the sun at a focus, a line joining a planet and the sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time, and The square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit.
Tycho Brahe, one of the ‘big five’ of astronomy, set the stage for future astronomers to observe and chart the stars with the astronomical data that he collected, and the inventions that he created for charting the stars and other astronomical objects. Tycho also created the most accurate star catalogue of the time, and although he incorrectly hypothesized the movement of the planets by saying that all the planets and the sun revolved around the earth, he was still able to make accurate predictions and observations of the movement of the planets. Tycho Brahe contributed enormously to our understanding of the universe through his observations of the stars, a comet, and the planets of our solar system.