The Deptford Lads - Tycho Brahe

Tycho Brahe (1546-1601)
We've come across Tycho Brahe a number of times during our travels:- in Copenhagen they have named the planetarium after him; in Helsingborg we stumbled upon a monument to him in one of the town's back streets; in Prague he was featured in an exhibition on alchemy; and in Antwerp we saw examples of his thinking in astronomical charts and engravings. So we decided to give him a web page.

This somewhat eccentric16^th century Danish astronomer occupies a key position in the history of astronomy and our understanding of the universe. Although one of the last great astronomers to reject the Copernican view of the solar system, his incredibly accurate measurements of the motions of the heavenly bodies - made before the invention of the telescope - enabled him to measure the length of a year to within less than a second. The level of accuracy that he was able to attain helped promote the adoption of the Gregorial calendar in 1582. Brahe's work inspired his student, Johannes Kepler, to formulate his three laws of planetary motion, which Isaac Newton then built upon in developing his theory of gravity.

Brahe was born on 14 December 1546 in Knudstrup in Skåne, southern Sweden (then under Danish rule). He studied law and philosophy at the universities of Copenhagen and Leipzig (and possibly Wittenburg and Rostock). In 1572 he discovered a supernova in the constellation Cassiopeia. Then, after he had spent some time traveling, Frederick II of Denmark and Norway funded the construction of an observatory for Brahe on island of Hven (Ven) in the middle of the Øresund between Denmark and Sweden. Construction of the castle of Uranienborg ("fortress of the heavens") was begun in 1576, and Brahe made observations from there for some 20 years.

After Frederick's death in 1588, his successor, Christian IV, withdrew his patronage, and in 1597 Brahe accepted the offer or a pension and a new Uranienborg near Prague from the (Holy Roman) Emperor Rudolf II. However, Brahe died in 1601 (24 October), before his new observatory was completed

On our trip to Copenhagen in November 1999 we did the "Round the Sound" circular trip around the Øresund. Translating simply as "The Sound", the Øresund is the strait between the Danish island of Zeland and the southern tip of Sweden which links the Baltic (or East) Sea with the North Sea (or German Sea). Brahe's Uranienborg observatory was on the small island of Ven (or Hven) in the middle of the sound. It seems he built it there at least partly because even in those days there was a distinct advantage, in terms of the atmospheric conditions, in being in the middle of the sea, away from inhabited areas. Don't forget that Brahe was working at a time before the telescope had been invented - the naked eye and a pair of compasses were his main tools of observation. Ven offered the right abount of isolation, without being too far from civilisation - it is fairly easy to get from there by boat to either Sweden or Denmark.

We didn't go to Ven - there is virtually nothing left of the Uranienborg castle now. However, wandering through the back streets of Helsingborg - near the northern end of the Øresund on the Swedish side - we came across a rather nice monument to Brahe.

08/05/00