TYCHO BRAHE 2

This week we continue with the story of Tycho Brahe.

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In the sixteenth century, astronomy had a problem. As we saw in last week’s post, sixteenth century astronomers still relied on the Almagest, the treatise written in the second century AD by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy. The Almagest presented a geocentric model of the universe: the Earth at the center, with the Sun, the Moon, the planets, and the fixed stars circling it in the ‘heavens.’

This model was, in its own way, an elegant and aesthetically pleasing depiction of the cosmos, but it had a glaring fault.

It was inaccurate.

After Columbus’ voyage, Europeans began to realize that the world was much larger than they had imagined, and they set out to explore (and exploit) it. To do so, they needed to acquire new navigation skills. Among the things they needed were precise star charts.

Charts generated by the Ptolemaic model were so inaccurate at predicting what the night sky would look like on any particular date that they were of little practical use. Tweaking the system, as Copernicus had done (by positing that the Sun and Moon revolved around the Earth, and the planets and stars revolved around that Sun/Moon/Earth system), did not solve the problem.

The new humanist/scientific approach offered a solution: instead of interrogating an old text, astronomers started observing the phenomena—that is, making long-term, systematic, meticulous observation of the night sky.

It was to do exactly this that Tycho Brahe was granted the island of Hven (which, remember, the Danish King, Frederick II, bequeathed him, along with an annual stipend of 500 rigsdalers).

During his years on Hven, Tycho Brahe was a famous and influential man. With the generous royal support he received, he constructed an observatory, located at the center of the island, known as Uraniborg (“The Castle of Urania,” Urania being the Greek muse of astronomy).

This observatory was a massive structure—more castle, really, than simple observatory—in which nearly a hundred students, apprentices, and artisans toiled. The building was surrounded by carefully arranged and tended gardens and orchards that were enclosed by an impressive, square earthen wall, sheathed in stone, that was 75 meters (250 feet) on a side, 5.5 meters (18 feet) high, and 5 meters (16 feet) thick at the base (the remnant of this earthen wall is the only sign that remains of the place today).

Each corner of the enclosing wall contained a gatehouse in which English mastiffs were kept to alert the gatekeepers to the arrival of visitors. Within the wall were several smaller buildings—including a paper mill and a printing press (Brahe published his own work).

These grounds were impressive enough, but it was the observatory itself that dominated everything.

Built primarily of red brick, and more than three stories tall, it sat like a giant, uncut ruby in an emerald setting. Towers on the sides of the main building featured observation decks for star gazing. At the very top of the structure sat a cupola that included a ‘widow’s walk’ from where more observation could be made. (See the illustration at the top of this post for a depiction of Uraniborg.)

Inside, were galleries, a library, and numerous rooms (including a garret on the top floor, just below the cupola, divided into chambers for students). Brahe never lost his earlier interest in Alchemy, and so the cellar held retorts and other esoteric laboratory equipment for alchemical experiments.

If you were able to somehow travel back in time and visit the island of Hven and Uraniborg, here’s how it would go.

First, you’d take a boat from Copenhagen across the sound and disembark at the harbor on the island’s western shore. From there, it is a walk of about a kilometer and a half (slightly under a mile) to Uraniborg, located in the center of the island.

You would see the large earthen wall in the distance, growing closer with each step, the upper part of Uraniborg rising above it. Entering through one of the gates—the English mastiffs no doubt greeting you with a strident chorus of barking—you would have your first unobstructed view of the imposing building where Tycho Brahe conducted his work, huge, elegant, famous.

Most first-time observers were overcome by excitement, anticipation, and sheer awe.

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From this impressive observatory, using the very best instruments of the time—but no telescopes; telescopes came later—Tycho Brahe embarked on a decades-long project that resulted in the most precise star charts every made to that point, star charts accurate enough at predicting where planets and stars would be at various dates that they served as invaluable navigational aids.

However…

Though Tycho Brahe succeeded in his life’s work—the meticulous observation and mapping of the night sky—his time on Hven was complicated.

Coming from the nobility as he did, he had what we today would characterize as a massive sense of entitlement. He ruled over the island of Hven like a medieval feudal lord and was embroiled in constant squabbles with neighbors and tenants over rents and privileges. He was irascible, impatient, and egotistical, and he made enemies. As long as royal patronage of his endeavors continued, though, he could afford to brush aside those enemies.

One of his duties to the Danish court was to provide astrological charts to the royal family (including the King). The star charts Brahe had created from his years of observations served as invaluable navigation aids, but they also served to make accurate (or what were believed at the time to be accurate) astrological charts. It was a different time from our own, and the mingling of what we moderns consider to be science and mysticism was common.

His services as court Astrologer kept Brahe in close contact with the King and other important couriers and so helped assure his position of dominance on Hven.

In the spring of 1588, however, when Brahe was forty-two, the Danish King Frederick II died after a nearly thirty-year reign. This left Brahe without his main means of support—both political and financial.

The result was inevitable: the vultures circled, and, over the years, he found himself gradually being stripped of both privilege and funding. By 1597, having had enough of such treatment, he left Hven (taking the results of his observations with him).

Two years later, he wound up in Prague, as court astrologer to Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor. There, Brahe receive royal funding once more and was able to continue his night-sky observations,. It was there, too, that he met and worked with Johannes Kepler—who would later use Brahe’s observations to put together his accurate (and revolutionary) Heliocentric model of the solar system.

Tycho Brahe died in Prague at the relatively young age of fifty-four. The cause of his death is unclear. It might have resulted from a ruptured bladder, a kidney infection, or even prostate cancer. Legend has it that, on his death bed, he confessed that he feared he had lived in vain and that all his work would come to nothing.

He need not have worried.

Tycho Brahe is remembered now as one of the seminal figures in the ‘scientific revolution’ of the sixteen the century—a famous man who did famously important work and who, in his own way, changed the world.