Tycho Brahe’s Model and Contribution to Science

Brahe’s parents were nobles, and he was born in Denmark in 1546. His affluent uncle nurtured him, and he went to Copenhagen and Leipzig universities. Despite his family’s insistence that he should study law, Brahe chose to pursue astronomy.

In 1566, Brahe, then 20 years old, engaged in a duel with a fellow student about who was the superior mathematician. As a result, he lost a significant portion of his nose and used a metal prosthetic to hide the disfigurement for the remainder of his life. Tycho Brahe’s model is among the first few, along with those by Copernicus and Kepler.

Tycho Brahe’s model

Tycho Brahe’s model created a new concept altogether. He considered that the heliocentric model’s beauty was too high a price to pay for relinquishing the idea of an Earth that is static. Furthermore, even Brahe’s most meticulous studies on the isle of Hven failed to establish the existence of an annual parallax of stars, which should have resulted from the Earth’s rotation around the Sun. No wonder Brahe continued to believe in the Bible and Aristotle’s physics-based theology of a fixed Earth. Brahe found more evidence in his quest for the correct universe model in his surveillance of Mars, which were, as we now know, incorrect – it appeared that Mars was sometimes closer to Earth than the Sun.

It was significant since Mars was always farther away from the Earth than the Sun in both Ptolemy’s and Copernicus’ theories. Tycho Brahe’s model of the universe proposed that united the tradition of immovable Earth with Copernicus’ heliocentric geometry – geo-heliocentric system – based on this and the conclusion that planetary spheres did not exist, which resulted from the observation of a comet in 1577. He talked about it in 1588 in De Mundi aethereal recentioribus phaenomenis (On the Most Recent Phenomena of the Aetherial World), a book on the comet from 1577 that he had meticulously prepared for several years.

Tycho Brahe’s model performed the most precise astronomical observations of his time and challenged the popular notion about celestial movements.

Tycho Brahe’s Instruments

Tycho Brahe’s instruments, many of which he built himself, were used to make many observations and discoveries. Initially, the building and improvement of Tycho Brahe’s Instruments was random, but it was crucial to the advancement of his research. While still a student in Leipzig, he set an early example. He recognised he needed a better means to put down his observations and the angles and descriptions while gazing at the sky. As a result, he was the first to employ an observational notebook. In this notebook, he recorded his observations and posed questions to himself that he would later try to answer. Tycho also drew pictures of what he witnessed, ranging from comets to planet motions.

Tycho Brahe’s Contributions to Science

In 1609, Galileo Galilei used a telescope for the first time to study space. Tycho, sadly, did not live long enough to witness this and all of Tycho Brahe’s contributions to science were made with the naked eye, using the best astronomical gear available in Europe.

Tycho Brahe’s contributions to science and astronomy have a huge list. Some of Tycho Brahe’s Contributions are as follows-

The New Star

On November 11, 1572, Tycho Brahe made his first big discovery. Tycho was amazed to find a new light brighter than Venus in the sky while watching the night sky from an uncle’s house.

Tycho Brahe wrote De nova Stella – The New Star in 1573, and his name became well-known in astronomical circles. Although other individuals had seen the new star, Tycho published the most thorough examination of it, and it is one of the most prominent of Tycho Brahe’s contributions to science. 

The Distance to a Comet

Tycho Brahe showcased a comet orbiting the sun. The comet’s tail is facing away from the sun. The Great Comet of 1577 frightened people because it was considered evil. Between November 13, 1577, and January 26, 1578, Tycho documented the Comet’s positions, after which he could no longer see it. Tycho utilised Hipparchus’ parallax method to calculate the distance between the comet and the earth. 

Tycho Brahe’s model

The earth-centred solar system and the sun-centred solar system were notions Tycho was familiar with, and Ptolemy and Copernicus had supplied the mathematics for these systems, respectively. Even as a 15-year-old, Tycho was disappointed with their efforts, seeing errors in the planet locations projected by their models. He also believed that the planet was too heavy to soar through the heavens at the incredible speeds that the system predicted by Copernicus.

Tycho Brahe’s model attempted to create a comparable work to Ptolemy’s and Copernicus’s best work. He stated that Copernicus was correct in his assertion that the five planets — Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn – orbit the sun. However, as Ptolemy stated, the moon, sun, and stars all orbit the earth.

Conclusion 

Tycho Brahe’s instruments were new, and he tested and established nightly monitoring. He also owned and controlled his printing press. Many academics visited the observatory, and Tycho taught a generation of young astronomers how to observe. Tycho packed up his instruments and writings and left Denmark in 1597 after a disagreement with King Christian IV. After a long journey, he arrived in Prague in 1599 to work as the Imperial Mathematician at Emperor Rudolph II’s court. In 1601 he died there.His instruments were later kept and lost.