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Tycho Brahe
Astronomae Instauratae Progymasmata ... et Praeterea de Admiranda Noua Stella Anno 1572
(Frankfurt, 1610)
The Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe must rank among the most colorful figures of the Scientific Revolution, most notably on account of his magnificent island observatory, whose campus included a large inventory of ingenuous and handsomely crafted devices for astronomical observations, and his own printing press and paper mill, which he used to control the production and circulation of his published findings.
Tycho's naked-eye observations of a new star -- the result of a stellar supernova that had suddenly exploded onto the scene of the night sky within the constellation of Cassiopeia in 1572 (exhibited here) -- and his observation of the passing of a comet in 1577, were momentous, fr he had proved their occurrence, not within the mutable realm of the sublunary spheres, but in the vaulting expanse of the incorruptible heavens where nothing was supposed to change. |