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THE NEW MEXICO MUSEUM OF SPACE HISTORY
CURATION PAPER NUMBER FIVE
WINTER 2012
‘OOPS, ONCE MORE,’ BY WAYNE MATTSON, USAF LT.
COL. (RET.), AND THE FIFTH AND FINAL CHAPTER OF THE
‘ASTRONOMERS BEFORE TELESCOPES’ SERIES, ‘THE
TRIUMPH OF EUROPE (c. 1500-1652)’ BY JIM MAYBERRY
Colonel Wayne Mattson at his home in Alamogordo, New Mexico, 2004.
The New Mexico Museum of Space
History, a branch of the Department
of Cultural Affairs of the State of New
Mexico, was founded in 1976 as the
International Space Hall of Fame.
The Museum includes the Clyde W.
Tombaugh IMAX Dome Theater and
Planetarium, the International Space
Hall of Fame, the John P. Stapp Air and
Space Park, and the Hubbard Space
Science Research Building.
Publisher’s Note:
The New Mexico Museum of Space
History is pleased to announce
publication of the fifth in a series of
papers, Curation Paper Number Five. It
features the last of the five part series on
the early history of astronomy,
‘Astronomers before Telescopes,’ by
Assistant Curator Jim Mayberry. The
series began with Curation Paper
Number One; all Curation Papers can be
downloaded from the New Mexico
Museum of Space History’s website,
nmspacemuseum.org. Curation Paper
Number Five also has the last article on
military mishaps in the Tularosa Basin,
‘Oops, Once More,’ by Wayne Mattson
(Lt. Colonel Mattson passed away on the
third of February 2012).
There are many histories of astronomy in
the Old World; few have focused on the
people who lived those histories. As the
names of astronomers of New World
cultures are unknown, the series does not
discuss the astronomical traditions of the
Maya or other Native American groups.
The Astronomers before Telescopes
series details the rise, and at times the
decline, of the science of astronomy
prior to the middle of the seventeenth
century and the widespread use of
telescopes. The series consists of:
1) The Age of Giants (c. 2650 BC–c. AD
520)
2) The Not So Dark Ages: the Rise of
India and Islam (476-c. 1070)
3) The Pen and the Sword: Translators,
Moors, and Mongols (1013-c. 1350)
4) Copernicus, Ulugh Beg and the
Golden Age of Jewish Astronomy
(1288-1575)
5) The Triumph of Europe (c. 1500-
1652).
The lives of the more than 500 men and
women discussed in this series illustrate
the progress of the science of astronomy
from its earliest days to the Scientific
Revolution that led to the birth of the
modern world. In this issue is ‘The
Triumph of Europe (c. 1500-1652).’ It
tells the story of how the astronomy of
the West surpassed all others; this was
before the use of telescopes had begun.
In those same years, Western Europeans
would begin to explore, and then
conquer, most of the known world.
The era was highlighted by the work of
two men in particular: the Danish
nobleman Tycho Brahe and the German
astronomer, Johannes Kepler. Tycho
Brahe was the most precise observer of
the heavens before the use of telescope.
Kepler, who worked at a young age in
his mother’s tavern, played a key role in
the triumph of the model of
heliocentrism. This issue also details the
practice of astronomy without telescopes
in parts of Asia as late as the twentieth
century.
Curation Paper Number Six will be a
commemoration of the fortieth
anniversary of the Apollo 16 lunar
landing mission. It will be published on
nmspacemuseum.org, the museum’s
website, in the late spring of 2012.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
‘Oops, Once More,’ by Wayne Mattson, USAF Lt. Col. (Ret.) Page 1
Introduction, ‘Astronomers before Telescopes: The Triumph of Europe
(c. 1500-1652)’ Page 7
The Triumph of Europe (c. 1500-1652) Page 14
Glossary of Terms of Terms Used Page 44
Period Astronomers in Popular Culture Page 61
Astronomical Features and Spacecraft Named for Period Astronomers Page 63
Selected Bibliography Page 65
A map of the world that was drawn by Willem Blaeu in the year 1635
Primary Editor: Stacie Pritchett
Primary Author: Jim Mayberry, Assistant Curator
1
‘OOPS, ONCE MORE,’ BY WAYNE MATTSON, USAF LT. COL. (RET.) (Publisher’s note:
Lieutenant Colonel Wayne Mattson passed away at his home in Alamogordo, New Mexico on
February 3, 2012. He is sorely missed).
While nothing was falling from the skies in the
Tularosa Basin during a series of tests during
November and December of 1964, there were
many sonic booms there. Throughout the
United States, there was concern that sonic
booms caused broken windows, cracked plaster
on interior walls and various amounts of other
damage. To try to determine exactly what they
do, a series of heavily instrumented structures,
ranging from a greenhouse to a storefront were
constructed at Oscura Range Camp. F-104s
and B-58s were to make hundreds of passes at
various speeds to determine what damage
would be caused by sonic booms [1].
An F-104 Starfighter (photo credit:
U.S. Air Force)
As part of a public relations program, scores of
reporters were invited to visit this “boom town”
while an F-104 would create sonic booms; thus,
the media could see for themselves exactly
what would happen. Some 80 reporters
attended the event. Initial overflights were
rather ho-hum and nothing exciting happened.
Nothing happened, that is, until the
photographers requested a very low altitude
pass so they could get some pictures. The F-
104 pilot complied and accelerated to
supersonic speed; this created a massive boom.
The resulting overpressure of 40 pounds per
square foot shattered two plate glass windows
and broke about 15 smaller panes of glass in
the mock greenhouse [2]
On Wednesday, February 3, 1965, an Army
missile training battery from Fort Sill,
Oklahoma launched two Pershing missiles from
Fort Wingate, New Mexico. The first missile
‘impacted’ White Sands Missile Range as
scheduled even though it appeared to take
much longer that the usual six and half to seven
minutes for the 200-mile flight. The second
missile overshot the missile range and landed
about two miles east of the southeast tip of
range near Orogrande [3].
A part of Alamogordo experienced unwanted
darkness in the evening of 16 February 1965; it
seems that a missing missile part was the
culprit. The nosecone and attached parachute
managed to land on power lines and caused a
power outage. Airman James Bond of the
6580th
Air Police Squadron found the missing
missile part on North Florida Avenue at 7:48
p.m. Community Public Service personnel
removed the parachute; the instrumentation
payload was given to Airman Bond for return
to Holloman Air Force Base. Electric power
was then restored [4].
Sometimes things are seen to fall, but when
searches are done, nothing is located. At least,
nothing is ever admitted to by the military.
This was the case on the night of April 8, 1965
when three search planes flew over the rim of
the Guadalupe Mountains in southeast Otero
County trying to determine if an aircraft wend
down 25 to 30 miles southwest of the town of
Hope. It seems that rancher Buddy Tulk
reported seeing a blinking red light disappear
2
behind a hill. That was followed by an
explosion and a flash of fire, then another flash
about five minutes later. The Roswell Federal
Aviation Agency reported that no planes that
had filed flight plans were in the area and none
was overdue. State and County officials
doubted that a plane was down and felt that the
observed incident was a missile firing.
However, they could get no confirmation of a
missile firing at the time of the incident [5].
Mountains seem to have a magnetic attraction
for airplanes. This was confirmed about
midmorning of April 14, 1965, when an Army
O1A, based at Holloman Air Force Base,
crashed into a mountain near the TV translator.
This crash created a brush fire that seared five
acres in the Sacramento Mountains. Both
occupants of the Army airplane survived the
incident. The crew of the plane was rescued
and the brush fire was being fought [6]. The
next day the name of the pilot, Captain Thomas
H. Dollahite, was released along with the fact
that he had summoned help after the crash and
the start of the fire. Adverse winds created
difficulty in fighting the fire, which eventually
spread to 120 acres before being contained [7].
Neither the pilot nor his glider were harmed the
evening of April 18 when the craft touched
down in a narrow clear space south of the
Catholic Cemetery on First Street, in
Alamogordo. Captain Robert L. Scheurer of
Holloman Air Force Base was gliding from
Socorro to the Alamogordo airport. Flying
close to the Sacramento Mountains, in an effort
to catch currents to complete his flight, he said
he “ran out of air” and was forced to land short
of the Alamogordo Airport. The glider was
disassembled and taken from the landing site,
which was bordered on one side by a wire
fence and on the other by graves and
tombstones [8].
A portion of U.S. 70 sustained a twelve by
fifteen-inch hole when a part of a ballistic
missile that was being used as a target for
another missile smashed into the concrete. The
highway had been closed for the firing and no
vehicles were driving in the area at the time of
impact. White Sands Missile Range officials
said that this was the tenth time in missile
firings over the highway that a missile or
fragments had struck the road. They said that
was out of more than 15,000 missile firings
since 1950. Highway Department crews
repaired the highway. White Sands officials
did not disclose the type of missile involved in
the incident [9].
A test launch of a Little Joe II on 19 May 1965
could be called both a success and a failure.
The test called for the Little Joe II to climb to
an altitude of twenty miles above the Tularosa
Basin; then a simulated malfunction was to take
place: The escape system for the Apollo
capsule was to fire. This should safely lift the
capsule clear of the “malfunctioning” launch
rocket.
Little Joe II launch on December 8, 1964
(photo credit: NASA)
However, about halfway to test altitude the
Little Joe II rocket experiences a malfunction in
3
the autopilot guidance-control system and this
caused the rocket to spin excessively and then
break up, spreading debris across the sky. The
escape rocket on the capsule was fired; this
lifted it away from the malfunctioning Little
Joe II. Therefore, the test was successful in
that it showed the escape system worked as
advertised, but it was a failure in that the
desired test altitude was never reached [10].
An article in the Alamogordo Daily News on
May 27, 1965, was about a Pershing missile
being fired from Gilson Butte, Utah with an
impact on White Sands Missile Range. The
missile shot was the first from this new launch
complex located about 40 miles southwest of
Green River, Utah. The article indicated that
there was to be a second missile launch, which
was delayed because of missile difficulties; this
was to be accomplished by an overseas unit.
The unit was Battery D, 4th
Missile Battalion,
41st Artillery, which had returned to the United
States for annual qualifications with the missile
[11].
The following day the newspaper carried an
article to the effect that the delayed missile had
been fired, but had overshot the missile range.
However, it did manage to find a big, wide-
open area for impact – McGregor Missile
Range, in southern Otero County. The unit
from Germany’s missile managed to land about
thirteen miles southeast of the town of
Orogrande on McGregor and caused no
damage [12]. The sixteenth of June 1965, saw
an F-4C for the 366th
Tactical Fighter Wing
descend from the sky with the two-crew
members floating down in parachutes. At 2:45
p.m., while coming in for a landing at
Holloman, something occurred which caused
the crew to decide to eject. They did so and
landed safely [13].
A joint military-industrial accident
investigation board was convened at Holloman
to determine why this F-4C crashed. The 35-
member team included professional
investigators and technicians from several Air
Force facilities and aerospace manufacturers
across the nation. The president of this special
board was Col. Edward W. Szaniawski, deputy
director of Aerospace Safety in the Inspector
General’s office at Norton Air Force Base in
California [14].
An F-4C (photo credit: Boeing Photo)
Sunday morning, July 18, 1965, saw an F-104
crash about ten miles west-southwest of San
Andres Peak, and ten miles north of Organ.
The crash took place at 10:04 a.m. The aircraft
was flying a tow target mission when a mishap
occurred and the pilot, Major Wallace E.
Lowman, ejected. He was picked up by
helicopter, flown to the Holloman base
hospital, checked out and pronounced
uninjured. The pilot and plane were on
temporary duty from Webb AFB, Texas flying
out of Biggs AFB in El Paso [15].
Early Tuesday morning of July 27, 1965, an
Athena missile lifted off from Green River,
Utah and landed east of the small community
of Engle, New Mexico, well to the west of
WSMR. The White Sands information office
said the missile hit in a “predetermined impact
area” but a spokesman said he didn’t know if
the rocket had been programmed to come down
in that area originally [16].
4
Saturday night, August 7, 1965, saw two
Athena missiles fired from Green River, Utah.
The first hit White Sands Missile Range as per
plan. However, the second missile fell into the
category of “where are you?” Radar tracking
data indicated that the Athena might have
reached an area southeast of Fabens, Texas.
Search for the missing missile was centered
southeast of there; this was some fifty miles
south of where it was supposed to go. No
reports of damage were received from the
Fabens area and there were no reports of
anyone sighting or hearing the missile. It was
thought that the missile might have
disintegrated in flight. An Athena program
official said, “We don’t know what happened
to the second missile [17].
Imagine the consternation of individuals
driving along on Highway 54 south of
Alamogordo who suddenly came upon an
airplane sitting on the highway. This was the
case on Wednesday, August 11, 1965 when an
Army U6A single engine craft sat down in the
middle of the highway seventeen miles south of
Alamogordo. The pilot, Harold P. Wheeler of
Alamogordo, experienced an illuminated
warning light and elected to land on the
highway. A mechanic was dispatched from
White Sands Missile Range to check out the
aircraft and resolved the problem. After the
problem was resolved, State Highway
Patrolman Don Schultz held up traffic and
Wheeler took off and returned to Holloman
with no further problem [18].
During the summer of 1965 the Army spent
time, money and labor searching for the
Pershing missile that went AWOL (Absent
Without Leave) in November 1964. A search
by helicopters from Fort Carson in late June
brought no results. Thus, a large-scale ground
and air search was scheduled for August. This
search included sending a seventeen-man team
into the Creede, Colorado area in August. This
team included twelve soldiers riding horseback
combing the hills around Miners Creek west of
McKenzie Mountain. Included in the search
party was an aerial support team of a
helicopter, pilots, and mechanics.
A Pershing Missile (photo credit: U.S.
Army)
The Army had offered a reward of $500 for the
recovery of major portions of the missile, but
no one came forward to present any missile
parts and claim the prize. The reward period
was extended until September 30. At that
point, the Army had spent about $12,500 on
search efforts and the August search was
expected to add $23,000 to the cost [19]. The
missing missile was uncovered only in October
of 1965, when graduate geology student
Maurice Chaffee, of Tucson, Arizona, reported
that he had found pieces of it. The location of
the wreckage was twelve miles northwest of
Creede. White Sands officials said that he
would receive the $500 reward [20], [21].
A wayward balloon held up traffic on Highway
70 west of Alamogordo on Tuesday August 24,
1965. The parachute carrying a balloon and
700-pound payload drifted across power lines
and the roadway. It briefly stopped traffic until
5
crews from Community Public Service and
from Holloman removed the offending
equipment. A State Highway Patrolman
controlled traffic during the equipment removal
process [22]. On Wednesday, the 25 of August
1965, the White Sands Missile Range policy of
having a roadblock when missile launches
cross over Highway 70 appeared to pay off; a
Hawk anti-aircraft missile had been aimed at its
target, a drone aircraft, but instead it would
slam into the highway. This afternoon launch
damaged part of the pavement; a road repair
crew was dispatched to the area and traffic flow
was resumed in a few hours [23].
A HAWK being fired (photo credit: U.S.
Army)
A B-47 from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
in Ohio crashed on take-off at Holloman AFB
at 1:04 p.m. on December 29, 1965. The
airplane was flying a radar target mission in
support of an F-106 project at the base [24].
The next day the newspaper article indicated
that the aircraft had crashed on the overrun area
on Runway 33 and the wreckage had caught
fire. There was no indication of trouble before
the crash. Both pilots aboard the airplane were
killed. A board of officers was appointed to
investigate the crash [25].
George H. Reis, a pilot from Shakopee,
Minnesota, crashed his Aeronca Chief between
Ruidoso and Apache Summit, in Lincoln
County, on Saturday, April 30, 1966. The
plane was flying west above Highway U.S. 70
when it hit huge fir trees on a steep
embankment. Reis said that his altimeter had
stuck at 4,000 feet and he did not realize the
height of the mountains in the area. A passing
motorist from Tularosa, Ansel Austin, managed
to tie the aircraft to nearby trees, thereby
keeping it from topping down the embankment.
A trio of passing truck drivers rushed to the
scene and managed to saw the pilot out of the
plane. He was taken to the Ruidoso-Hondo
Hospital with a fractured leg and facial injuries
[26].
An Aeronca Chief
6
References Cited
[1] Alamogordo Daily News, December 01, 1964, page 1.
[2] Alamogordo Daily News, December 03, 1964, page 1; White Sands Missile Ranger, May
2010, Page 3.
[3] Alamogordo Daily News, February 04, 1965, page 1.
[4] Alamogordo Daily News, February 17, 1965, page 1.
[5] Alamogordo Daily News, April 09, 1965, page 1.
[6] Alamogordo Daily News, April 14, 1965, page 1.
[7] Alamogordo Daily News, April 15, 1965, page 1.
[8] Alamogordo Daily News, April 19, 1965, page 1.
[9] Alamogordo Daily News, April 28, 1965, page 1.
[10] Alamogordo Daily News, May 19, 1965, page 1.
[11] Alamogordo Daily News, May 27, 1965, page 1.
[12] Alamogordo Daily News, May 28, 1965, page 2.
[13] Alamogordo Daily News, June 17, 1965, page 1.
[14] Alamogordo Daily News, June 22, 1965, page 1.
[15] Alamogordo Daily News, July 19, 1965, page 1.
[16] Alamogordo Daily News, July 27, 1965, page 6.
[17] Alamogordo Daily News, August 08, 1965, page 1.
[18] Alamogordo Daily News, August 12, 1965, page 1.
[19] Alamogordo Daily News, August 02, 1965, page 1.
[20] Alamogordo Daily News, October 02, 1965, page 6.
[21] Alamogordo Daily News, October 04, 1965, page 6.
[22] Alamogordo Daily News, August 26, 1965, page 10.
[23] Alamogordo Daily News, August 26, 1965, page 6.
[24] Alamogordo Daily News, December 29, 1965, page 1.
[25] Alamogordo Daily News, December 30, 1965, page 1.
[26] Alamogordo Daily News, May 01, 1966, page 1.
7
INTRODUCTION, ASTRONOMERS BEFORE TELESCOPES: THE
TRIUMPH OF EUROPE (c. 1500-1652)
The first years of the sixteenth century were
the dawn of a new era, the ‘Age of Europe.’
This was due to a number of events. Some
of the more important were:
1) The discovery of the Americas by
Spain in the year 1492; this provided
new foodstuffs that helped to spur
rapid population growth in Europe.
2) The opening of a new trade route by
the Portuguese in 1496; it went south
of the Cape of Good Hope at the tip
of Africa and then north and east, to
India and the Orient. This not only
helped Europe it hurt Muslim states
that had control of the old routes.
3) The invention of the movable type
printing press in 1450, in Germany;
this led to an increase in science and
education in the west of Europe.
4) Technological advances in Europe.
These ranged from navigation and
shipbuilding to new methods in
metallurgy and weaponry.
The rise of Europe was not a given; in the
year 1500, China was by far the richest
country in the world. The greatest cities
were there, as well as in India and in Muslim
realms. The most advanced school of math
in the world was in Kerala, in the south of
India. The Muslim Ottoman Turks were the
most aggressive state of the Old World.
This was due for the most part to their army;
the largest in the West, it was advancing on
its foes in both Europe and Asia.
Western Europe was fractured, with constant
warfare between England, France, Spain,
and a host of other countries. There were an
estimated 57 million people in the west of
Europe at the time; this was just thirteen
percent of the population of the world.
Despite all of this, in less than 150 years
Western Europe would be all but supreme
from one end of the globe to the other.
The political fragmentation of Europe was
reflected in its religious disunity. This grew
much worse as well in 1517; that year,
Martin Luther, a German monk, began the
Reformation. He wrote that personal
salvation did not depend on the Catholic
Church and its hierarchy. He was reacting
for the most part to the growing corruption
of the Church.
This was all too clear to most people, due to
the low state of the Papacy in this era.
Popes had varied from sybaritic libertines
such as Alexander VI, the ‘Borgia’ pope, to
true warrior pontiffs such as Julius II. Most
of them were patrons of the arts; none of
them could be called real ‘men of God.’
Europe in 1500 (Courtesy of: © 2010
Christos Nussli, www euratlas.com)
By the time of Luther, the Church was more
of a temporal than a sacred power. He had
been exposed to its venality more than most
Christians would be, due to its heavy
8
presence in Germany. Germany was the
core of the Holy Roman Empire. This was
not a unified state; it was a collection of
independent principalities, kingdoms, and
duchies. There was little internal cohesion
in it at most times. The Church owned
much of this patchwork of states; its taxes
were often higher than were those in the rest
of the Empire.
The princes of Germany, for the most part in
the north of the country, had long chafed
under the hand of Rome. Many of them
found Luther’s religious objections to the
Church a perfect excuse to rebel. Seven
years after he had challenged the pope, they
formed a defensive league due to attacks by
Catholics. This began more than two
centuries of war between the two faiths.
Soon, they had divided Europe between
them: Protestants ruled England, Holland,
Switzerland, the north of Germany, and
Scandinavia. Catholics controlled most of
the rest of the continent; the main exceptions
to this were Eastern Orthodox Russia as well
as the Balkans, where the Turks held sway.
Luther defends himself before Charles V
In light of all of these facts, the dominance
that Western Europe had in much of the
globe by 1650 is more than remarkable. The
only real powers in the world that were still
free of Europe by then were Turkey, China,
and the Mughal Empire. Western Europe
was able to control much of the Earth at the
same time that religious and dynastic wars
kept the continent in a state of turmoil.
As the sixteenth century dawned, the
strongest European realm was Catholic
Spain; this was the start of its Golden Age.
The riches of the ‘Indies,’ (the Americas)
fueled it. Soon, tons of silver and gold from
there would go to Spain in the annual
Treasure Fleet. By the year 1550 Spain was
at its height; it controlled much of the New
World as well as most of Italy and what are
now Belgium and the Netherlands. When
the King of Portugal died 30 years later,
Spain took over his realm and all of its
colonies.
Charles V (1501-1559) was the first of the
Habsburgs to be King of Spain; he was just
the latest of that Austrian dynasty who had
served as head of the Holy Roman Empire.
When he stepped down from both of his
thrones three years before his death, he left
that realm to his brother, Ferdinand I; thus,
the Habsburgs still ruled much of Europe.
From the time of Charles V on, the kings of
Spain saw themselves as ‘Defenders of the
Faith’; this was not just against threats by
the Turks. He viewed the Protestants in the
same light; they were heretics. In the year
1568, this spirit helped start what is now
known as the Eighty Years’ War. Phillip II,
the son of Charles V and the new King of
Spain, tried to end the scourge of heresy in
Holland and the north of Belgium by
terrorizing the Protestants there back into the
arms of the Church. If the Dutch had not
flooded much of their own land, the
Spaniards would have soon won.
By the fifth year of the war, the rebels still
held a few towns on the North Sea coast;
their ships controlled the sea there as well.
The Dutch then counterattacked Spain; this
was not on land, but on the high seas. In the
9
year 1585, England joined them; it was at
war with Spain for the next two decades.
Privateers from both countries (called
pirates by the Spaniards) swarmed the seas
between Spain and America. The Treasure
Fleet of 1602 fell to the Dutch; Spain went
bankrupt five years later. This was not for
the first time; it had declared bankruptcy in
the years 1557, 1560, 1575, and 1596. Each
of these times, it had brought down much of
the banking system of Europe with it.
Spain’s economy had been wrecked long
before the initial default. The riches that
poured in from Mexico and Peru had led to
inflation that ruined the Spanish middle
class; it did not recover in full until the latter
half of the twentieth century. As with all
empires, Spain would have to invest more
men and funds into its conquests than it had;
all the while, its home economy declined.
Spain could still dominate much of Europe
due to its income from America; this was
despite its disastrous wars with both the
English and the Dutch. By the end of the
Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), its army,
which had been the best in Europe, had been
all but wiped out; it too was never the same.
In less than 50 years, Spain was no more
than a minor power on the world stage.
Much of this turbulent time is reflected in
the lives of the astronomers who lived in it.
In its early years, men in both Spain and
Portugal were leaders in science and math.
Pedro Nunes, Jerome Munoz, and Martin de
Albacar were just three of these.
Nunes was a premier mathematician of his
day. Munoz was one of the first men in the
West to say that the planets, the Sun, and the
Moon all move of their own power; de
Albacar was the first in the Christian world
to identify the magnetic pole. This was the
height of astronomy in both lands; soon, the
best work in the field would be done in
Denmark, Germany, Italy, and England.
The Reformation would affect scholars who
lived in the same years as these three; one of
them was Peter Ramus, of France. He lived
at the start of the ‘Wars of Religion’ (nine of
them) that racked his homeland in the years
from 1562 to 1593. In 1565, he converted to
Protestantism; mobs burned down his home
and library at this news. In three years, he
fled to Germany, but he returned to France
in 1570. Two years later, Ramus was one of
thousands of French Protestants killed in the
Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.
Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, 1572
In England, the religious strife of this era
caught up Leonard Digges, whom some
sources say built the first telescope. He took
part in a failed plot against ‘Bloody’ Mary,
the Catholic Queen; he had opposed her
marriage to Phillip II of Spain. She spared
his life, but he was ruined. He would soon
die.
One of the greatest scientists of the sixteenth
century was not a European: He was a
Syrian named Taqi al-Din. Known today as
the ‘last great scientist of the Muslim
world,’ his inventions brought him renown.
One of these was the first clock that had a
second hand; it was the earliest timepiece
that could be used for astronomy.
10
Taqi was the Head Astronomer for two
Ottoman sultans. The second of these rulers
built an observatory for him in Istanbul; it
has been called the most advanced one in
history at that time. In less than three years,
the same sultan had it razed. He destroyed
all of Taqi’s creations in it as well; these
included one of the first telescopes. Taqi
had said that a comet that year, 1580, was a
good omen for the Turks; instead, the
Empire was beset by disasters. Due to this,
the Turks cast aside him and his science.
This was the end of modern science and
math in the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of
years. This was similar to the death of
science in Central Asia more than a century
earlier (see Curation Paper Number Four).
Thus, the Muslim world fell far behind as
Europe reached new heights in technology.
One of the few of Taqi’s day whose work in
astronomy was the equal of his was William
IV. He was the Prince of Hesse-Kassel; it
was a small state in Germany. He too built a
modern observatory; it had the first rotating
dome in the world. He and his father were
leaders of the Protestant cause.
One sign of the discord in Western Europe
at this time was that Protestant astronomers
such as William IV were more likely to
embrace the model published by Copernicus
in 1543. The Pole, who had dedicated his
work to the pope, had said that the Earth
orbits the Sun; few in Catholic lands would
write in support of this for two centuries.
Another sign was the calendar. By the year
1580, the Julian calendar that had been used
by all of Christian Europe had an error of
ten days. Pope Gregory XIII formed a team
to deal with the problem. In two years, they
wrote the calendar that is used by most of
the world today; they named it for the pope.
The Gregorian calendar was the best yet in
Christian Europe; still, it was rejected by
most of the Protestant world. This was for
the most part due to its origin.
The most renowned astronomer of the
sixteenth century was a Danish nobleman
named Tycho Brahe. He is hailed as the
most precise observer before the telescope.
Like most scientists in Protestant lands, he
thought that the Earth moved, and not the
Sun; his view would change after he studied
the orbits of comets. This led him to write
what is known as the ‘Tychonic’ model; it is
the same as one written 87 years earlier, in
the Kerala School. He said that the five
planets as well as comets all circle the Sun.
The Sun, the stars, and the Moon, he wrote,
all orbit the Earth. As Copernicus had
shown that the Earth-centered view of the
Bible to be false, the Church would adopt
the Tychonic model, many in the Protestant
world did also.
Tycho Brahe (note prosthetic nose)
Tycho built two observatories on the isle of
Hven; both of them were more modern than
any that came before. He worked there from
the years 1580 to 1597; he built a printing
press and paper mill there as well. The first,
and larger, observatory has been called the
‘first modern research center.’ It was there
11
that he would calculate the length of the year
to within half a second; this was the best
estimate of it yet, at the time. Much of the
work that he did at Hven was without equal.
He benefited from having the King of
Denmark as a patron. When a new king
would not help Tycho, he moved to Prague.
Uraniborg, Tycho’s first observatory
The city was the capital of the Holy Roman
Emperor; he was a Habsburg named
Rudolph II. He was a noted eccentric and
mystic. He built an observatory for Tycho;
the Dane would do some of his best work
there. One of his assistants in Prague was
Johannes Kepler; he wrote of Tycho’s
ghastly death there, in 1601. He said that
his employer had died from a burst bladder.
Doctors at the time said that he died of
kidney stones. Research points to mercury
poisoning as the true cause of death; if so, it
was most likely accidental. Tycho was an
alchemist; as mercury was a staple of that
field, he had long used it. As he was dying,
he may have taken it as a cure for his kidney
ailments.
Two Englishmen contributed to the growth
of astronomy in these years; the first was
William Gilbert. In the year 1600, he
discovered the magnetic field of the Earth.
He was also the first to write that the Earth’s
core is made of iron. He was a supporter of
the model that the Earth orbits the Sun.
The second one was Thomas Digges; he was
the eldest son of Leonard. He was one of
the first in a Christian land to write that the
Sun was the same as the stars. He was as
well one of the first men to say that the stars
were scattered across the heavens. Most in
the West at this time thought that the stars
were fixed to a ‘stellar sphere’ near Saturn.
One of the few Catholics that wrote in favor
of the model of heliocentrism was Matteo
Ricci. He was an Italian Jesuit; he spent
most of his life as a missionary, first in the
south of India, and then in China. He was
the first European to reach the Forbidden
City; this was the domain of the emperors of
China. His knowledge of astronomy and
math won him converts there as well as in
much of the rest of the country. He was the
first in that land to teach modern
trigonometry. He also had the first accurate
world map ever seen there.
The greatest astronomer of the last years of
this era was a German named Johannes
Kepler. Much of his life was ruled by some
of the events that kept Europe in a state of
turmoil. His father was a mercenary who
disappeared when Johannes was a young
child; he may have died in battle in Holland,
but his son would write that he and his
mother had been abandoned. She raised him
in her parents’ tavern. Poor health and
money problems plagued him for all of his
life.
As a young professor, he wrote one of the
first defenses of Copernicus’ model; this
brought him to the attention of Tycho Brahe,
who invited him to Prague. With Tycho’s
death, Kepler took his job; he claimed the
Dane’s notes from more than twenty years’
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of research as well. Kepler fought with
Tycho’s heirs for years over these in court.
He would lose in the end, but by then he had
used the data to disprove the Tychonic
model. He also used the notes to write the
first two of his Laws of Planetary Motion.
In 1612, Rudolph II was overthrown. His
odd beliefs, as well as The ‘Long War’ had
helped to cause his downfall; this was an
indecisive struggle with the Turks. They
had conquered most of Hungary a century
earlier; the Ottomans had been a threat to the
Empire since then. Due to the taxes he had
raised to pay for the war, Rudolph lost the
support of the Czech Protestants; his brother
Matthias, with their help, deposed him.
Matthias soon revoked the religious freedom
that Rudolph had granted them just three
years before. This enraged the Czechs; in
the year 1618, they threw two of his
henchmen out of a high window in Prague.
The pair landed in a moat filled with dried
manure; both of them would live. This is
known as the ‘Defenestration of Prague’; it
was the start of the Thirty Years’ War.
Matthias died the next year; a cousin of his
was crowned as the new emperor, Ferdinand
III. He set out to kill or convert all
Protestants in his lands. He worked with the
Habsburgs of Spain in pursuit of that goal.
The Defenestration of Prague
In one of his first acts, Matthias had ordered
that all of those in his court had to be a
Catholic. Kepler would not convert; for
this, he had to leave Prague in 1612. He
went to the city of Linz; while he was there,
he continued to work for the new emperor.
Seven years later, he wrote the third, and
last, of his Laws of Planetary Motion; in
1627, he published the Rudolphine Tables.
Both works played a key role in the triumph
of the heliocentric model.
Kepler had helped to start a new age in both
science and math; this was in the face of the
travails of his life. He married twice, the
first time was for money; the second one
was for love. He outlived both of his wives
as well as six of his eleven children. From
the year 1615 on, he had to spend six years
to defend his aged mother from charges of
witchcraft.
In need of funds, he was an astrologer for
first a duke, and then a general in the Thirty
Years’ War. In the midst of that conflict, he
made a long journey to collect money from
the duke. He died on the way home; in six
years, his grave, and all traces of it were
destroyed in the war.
The Thirty Years’ War would lay much
more than this to waste; it was the worst
conflict in Europe before World War I.
Disease and famine took most of the eight
million lives that were lost. Most of these
deaths were in Germany. By the end of the
war, the population there and in what is now
the Czech Republic was but half of what it
was at its start.
Ferdinand had crushed the Czechs by 1620;
from then on most of the fighting was in
Germany. Protestants and Catholic princes
there lined up for or against him. Religion
was no longer the prime cause of the war;
from this point on, it was driven by
13
Ferdinand’s bid to rule the Empire in more
than name only. By 1625, he had put his
foes to flight. Just when the Protestant
cause appeared to be lost, the King of
Denmark entered the war. Years before, this
same king had refused to support Tycho
Brahe. The conflict raged on four more
years, until the Danes sued for peace; the
Habsburgs seemed victorious.
France had defeated its own Protestant
rebels in the year 1628; in two years, it
started to pay Protestant armies of other
lands to fight the Catholic emperor. Sweden
was the main power to take the French gold;
after trouncing Ferdinand’s forces from the
north the south of Germany, the Swedes
were routed by them and the Spaniards by
1635. The next year France declared war on
the Habsburgs; the two greatest Catholic
powers in the world were now at war.
By the end of the Thirty Years’ War, most
of the nations of Europe had entered it, some
more than once. Spain had been in it since
the second year of the war. The French
crushed Spain’s army in 1643; France was
the strongest nation in Europe from then on.
Kepler and the first modern telescope
Astronomy had entered its modern period
decades earlier. In January 1610, Galileo
had turned his homemade telescope to the
heavens; he saw the four largest moons of
Jupiter. By the end of that year, he had
discovered that Venus has phases just like
those of Earth’s moon. Both of these finds,
he wrote, showed that the model that the
Earth circles the Sun was in fact, the truth.
Kepler soon heard of Galileo’s work; he
then built the first modern telescope. He
would make key discoveries with it.
As telescopes remade astronomy in Europe,
the study of the sky with the naked eye
would go on in much of Asia for three more
centuries. Primitive groups did not do this;
scientists in China, India, and elsewhere
worked without the use of telescopes. One
of these was Jai Singh; he was a Hindu
prince. In the first part of the eighteenth
century, he built five open-air observatories;
four of them still exist. Two still function.
Part of Jai Singh’s observatory at Delhi
(photo credit: J. Winzer)
Samanta Chandrasekhar was the last man
who won fame in astronomy for his work
without telescopes; he died in the year 1904.
A Hindu, he earned honors in Europe for his
prediction of a transit by the planet Venus.
His death was the end of more than 4700
years of traditional astronomy in the Old
World. In that time, the science had made
tremendous gains. The ingenuity and
insights of the pioneers of astronomy is an
eternal testament to spirit of humanity and
the ceaseless search for knowledge, beyond
the bounds of Earth, to the stars themselves.
14
THE TRIUMPH OF EUROPE (c. 1500-1652)
Jyesthadeva (c. 1500-c. 1575) was a
Hindu mathematician and astronomer; he
wrote of planetary orbits and eclipses.
He improved on the geoheliocentric
model that his teacher, Nilakantha
Somayaji, had written in the year 1501.
It said that the five planets orbit the Sun.
The Sun and the rest of the universe
circle the Earth. This was similar to what
Tycho Brahe would write 87 years later.
Sankara Variyar (c. 1500-c. 1560?) was
a Hindu astronomer and mathematician;
Jyesthadeva was his mentor. He
modified his teacher’s planetary theories;
they both taught at the Kerala School.
Mustafa ibn Ali (died 1571) was a
Turkish astronomer-astrologer and
geographer; he was the author of tracts on
spherical trigonometry. He wrote of
astrolabic quadrants as well as other tools
that were used to view the heavens. He
had astronomical data for more than 100
cities from China to Morocco; he penned
other texts and tables on astronomy. For
most of his work, he used data from
Ulugh Beg.
Ibn Ali wrote in Turkish; he hoped to
make it one of the languages of science in
the Muslim world, as were Arabic and
Persian. For the last eleven years of his
life, he was the Head Astronomer at the
Ottoman court.
Pedro Nunes (1502-1578) was a
Portuguese mapmaker; he was the most
honored mathematician of his day. His
writings on celestial navigation were the
best yet, at the time. His parents had
converted from Judaism; his
grandchildren would be jailed on the
charge that they had observed Jewish
practices in secret. Nunes entered the
University of Lisbon at the age of fifteen;
he was the Royal Cosmographer by the
time he was twenty-two. He taught at the
University of Lisbon for years; Clavius
was one of his students there.
Statue of Pedro Nunes in Lisbon,
Portugal (photo credit: Alvesgaspar)
Nunes built tools for use in astronomy;
he improved on the astrolabe. He
translated texts by Sacrobosco and
Peurbach to Portuguese. He wrote solar
tables; he rejected Copernicus’ model
that the Earth and the rest of the planets
orbit the Sun. The pope had him review
proposals for reforming the Julian
calendar; Nunes said that some problems
with calendars could not be solved.
Pietro Pitati (fl. 1537-1556) was an
astronomer and mathematician from
Italy. He wrote tables as well as
almanacs and other books; he urged
calendar reform. He was one of those
who taught Padovani.
15
James Bassantin (c. 1504-1568) was an
astrologer-astronomer from Scotland; he
published a book that had movable
diagrams to show how the Sun, the
Moon, and the planets all orbit the Earth.
He was an expert with astrolabes; he
wrote of their use.
Tang Shunzhi (1506-1560) was a
Chinese politician and astronomer; he
revived Muslim astronomy and math in
that land. He used trigonometry to revise
and update the Chinese Islamic calendar.
Ganesa (1507-after 1564) was a Hindu
astronomer-astrologer; his two brothers
were as well. Their father, Kesava, had
taught them. At the age of thirteen,
Ganesa wrote a key astronomy text. At
eighteen, he wrote a book of lunar tables.
He was the author of more than a dozen
tracts on astronomy; one of them was on
the works of Bhaskara II. He also wrote
of how to create calendars. He founded a
school of astronomy. It was one of five
in India; it would be most popular in the
north and west of that country.
Mulla Chand (fl. 1542) was a Muslim;
he was the Court Astronomer-Astrologer
for Humayun. He had been trained in
Samarkand. He wrote tables that were
based on the work there by Ulugh Beg.
Gemma Frisius (1508-1555) was a
Dutch mathematician and instrument-
maker; his real name was Jemme
Reinerszoon. He came from the region
of Friesland; he was one of the scholars
from Europe in this era who took a Latin
version of his birthplace for his name.
He is most noted as the first man to use
triangulation in surveying.
Frisius graduated from the University of
Louvain. He then worked there for
decades; he taught John Dee and
Johannes Stadius. He set up a workshop
in the town of Louvain. He won fame for
his precise instruments; one of these was
an astrolabe. He built the first type of
pocket-sized armillary spheres; they were
used as late as the eighteenth century.
Tycho Brahe was one of those who
praised his work.
A celestial globe built by Gemma
Frisius in 1537
Frisius studied comets; he used data from
both Apianus and Copernicus to write
tables. He was the first man to try to use
clocks to find longitude. This idea,
though unworkable in his day, has been
the accepted method since the year 1780;
that was when clocks that were precise
enough for this purpose were invented.
Gemma Frisius was a defender of
astrology. He was the personal doctor to
Charles V as well; for years, this
monarch supported him. Near the end of
his life, Frisius came out in strong
support of Copernicus’ model that the
Earth moves and not the Sun. He had
been writing a book on universal
astrolabes when he died of ‘stones’; his
eldest son, Cornelius Gemma, finished it.
16
Gemma Frisius
Humayun (1508-1556) was the second
Mughal emperor. He was an avid
amateur astronomer-astrologer; he was as
well a noted drunk. He built
observatories; he designed an astrolabe.
He fell to his death while waiting to
observe the planet Venus. Alcohol is
thought to have been a factor.
The Mughal Emperor Humayun
Alessandro Piccolomini (1508-1578)
was an Italian archbishop and playwright;
he was also a poet and a mathematical
astronomer. A graduate of the University
of Padua, he was born wealthy. He was a
champion of calendar reform. He wrote
key texts; one of these was the first book
of star charts to be printed by a machine.
It had maps of all but one of the 48
constellations that Ptolemy had used. It
was the earliest known atlas to have
diagrams that showed the stars, and not
the mythological figures. The first block
(hand)-printed star atlas had been done in
China more than five centuries earlier.
Piccolomini was one of the first in the
west of Europe to write works of
astronomy in a language other than Latin;
he used Italian. He was the first man to
designate the stars with Latin letters; he
assigned an ‘a’ to the brightest stars. He
penned a defense of Ptolemy’s
astronomy. In it, he rejected the model
by Copernicus; it said that the Earth
orbits the Sun, as do all the planets.
Muslih al-Din al-Lari (c. 1510-1572)
was a Persian mathematician; he was the
main astronomer for Humayun. He
wrote of the Almagest, as well as on
some of the work done by both Ali Kuscu
and al-Tusi. He moved to the Ottoman
Empire after the death of his patron.
Aloysius Lilius (c. 1510-1576) was an
Italian doctor and astronomer. In 1582,
his data from watching the sky, as well as
his thoughts on calendar change, would
be used by the ‘Reform Commission’;
they wrote the Gregorian calendar.
Robert Recorde (c. 1510-1558) was an
English (or Welsh) mathematician and
doctor. He was the first man to use the
equal sign (=). He taught Ptolemy’s
model of geocentrism at Oxford for
years; he was the first man to teach
algebra in Britain. He was as well the
first to publish books on astronomy and
math in English. Some of his work
17
would be the best in those fields in that
tongue for decades.
He wrote favorably on Copernicus’
model, but he did not explicitly support
it. He offended powerful figures at court;
he was found guilty of libel against one
of them. His innocence did not save him;
he died after a few weeks in debtor’s
prison.
Robert Recorde at work
Martin Cortes de Albacar (1510-1582)
was a Spanish cosmographer and
mapmaker. He was the first man in
Europe to identify the magnetic pole, but
he did not grasp the full concept of true
north. He wrote on the construction and
use of astrolabes; he rejected the model
of heliocentrism. His books were crucial
to the growth of navigation; they were
copied for decades.
Erasmus Reinhold (1511-1553) was a
German astronomer and mathematician;
he was one of the many noted graduates
of the University of Wittenberg in this
era. He rejected the model by
Copernicus; he did use data from the Pole
to write the Prutenic Tables. This led to
many of those who used the tables
accepting the idea that the Earth orbits
the Sun. His work replaced the Alfonsine
Tables as the most popular astronomical
tables in Europe. In 1627, the
Rudolphine Tables that Kepler had
written would in turn supplant them. In
his day, most saw Reinhold as the best
astronomer in the Protestant states of
Germany.
Giovanni Padovani (born c. 1512) was
an Italian mathematician and astronomer;
he published a book on horizontal as well
as vertical sundials. In it, he gave
directions on how to correct both types
for the effects of change in latitude.
Cyprian Lvovicky (1514?-1574) was a
Czech astrologer-astronomer; he tried to
make astrology a true science. He
combined it with math and pure
astronomy. He used data from both the
Prutenic and Alfonsine Tables to write
his own tables. He did this for the Holy
Roman Emperor, Rudolph II. Tycho
Brahe wrote in praise of his tables; the
two would correspond.
Rheticus (1514-1574) was an Austrian
scholar; he was Copernicus’ only student.
He was born Georg Iserin; when he was
fourteen he changed his name to von
Lauchen after the beheading of his father.
Most sources say that this was for
sorcery; a few claim that his father, who
was a doctor, had been stealing from his
patients.
As an adult, the son took the name
Rheticus. This came from ‘Rhaetia’; it
was the name of his part of Austria at the
time of the Roman Empire. He graduated
from the University of Wittenberg; he
then taught there. He next worked at the
University of Leipzig; in 1539, he went
to Poland, to meet Copernicus.
He worked for the Pole for the next two
years; he was his only student. In 1540,
18
Rheticus published his teacher’s notes in
a booklet that he had named Narratio; he
took the lead in publishing the rest of
Copernicus’ work. He wrote that it
would have remained unknown without
his efforts.
For the last twenty years of his life,
Rheticus worked as a doctor in Krakow.
He built tools for astronomy; he was as
well an alchemist. He was the first writer
to base his work on the model of
heliocentrism by Copernicus. He wrote
trigonometric tables that were so precise
they were used as late as the twentieth
century. In the year 1562, he left the
Catholic Church; he became a Protestant.
Rheticus
Peter Ramus (1515-1572) was a French
mathematician; he was born as Pierre de
la Ramee. He used advanced techniques
in math for astronomy. He did not object
to Copernicus’ model that the Earth
orbits the Sun; he stressed observation
over dogma. The University of Paris
banned him for years; this was due to his
fierce attacks on the works of Aristotle.
He would return; he taught there for
decades. Kepler would cite his work.
Peter Ramus
Mobs burned both his home and library
when he converted to Protestantism in the
year 1565. In three years, Ramus fled
France due to the persecution there. For
two years, he lived in Germany and then
Switzerland. He returned to France in
1570, only to die in two years, in the
Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.
Juan de Rojas (fl. 1550) was a Spanish
mathematician and astronomer; he was
taught by Gemma Frisius. He built the
first universal astrolabe that was based on
orthographic projection.
Ignatius Ni’meh Allah I (died 1587)
was a Syrian Orthodox Patriarch; in
Europe, he was known as Nehemias. The
Turks had forced him to convert to Islam;
he had first been accused of being an
atheist. His own church then deposed
him, as he had not died for his faith. He
had to flee to Italy in the year 1578; he
then worked in Rome for the pope.
He helped to write the Gregorian
calendar; he had 764 years of
astronomical records from the Middle
East with him when he came west. These
were from both Christian and Muslim
sources; he used data by Omar Khayyam
19
the most. As a member of the Reform
Commission, he relied on them to back
up his view of what should be done to
improve the calendar.
Ni’meh could compute the length of the
tropical year to within eight and half
seconds; this was the best estimate of it
yet at that time in the Christian world.
The pope did not use his data; the
Gregorian calendar would be accurate to
just 26 seconds. His work was not
released by the Church for 301 years.
A possible portrait of Patriarch
Ignatius Ni’meh Allah I
Moses Almosnino (1518-c. 1585) was a
Turkish rabbi; he wrote on some of the
books by Sacrobosco and Peurbach. He
penned a description of astrolabes. He
founded schools in Turkey; he taught
only theories that said that the Sun orbits
the Earth.
Johannes Humelius (1518-1562) was a
German mapmaker and astronomer; he
observed planetary motions. He rejected
Copernicus’ model that the Earth was in
constant motion, and not the Sun. He
taught Scultetus; his work influenced the
writing of Tycho Brahe.
Fathullah Shirazi (died 1589) was a
Persian scientist; he was the main
astronomer for the Mughal Emperor,
Akbar. He wrote the Bengali calendar
for Akbar; it is still used, in a revised
form, in Bangladesh as well as in much
of the east of India.
Leonard Digges (c. 1520-1559) was an
English mathematician; he published the
first perpetual calendar that was done in
English instead of Latin. He based it on
the model written long before by
Ptolemy. Some sources say that he built
the first telescope. He used it only as a
tool for survey; he did not view the
heavens with it. He did invent the
theodolite.
He took part in a failed plot against
Queen Mary; his life was spared, but he
lost all of his property as well as his
standing. He fought to recover both for
the rest of his life, but it would be in vain.
His son, Thomas, rewrote three of his
four principal works.
Jerome Munoz (1520-1591) was a
Spanish astronomer and engineer.
Oronce Fine and Gemma Frisius had both
trained him. He shared data on the 1572
supernova with both Hajek and Frisius.
He said that the new star showed that
Aristotle was wrong; the heavens were
not ‘perfect and unchanging.’ He
mapped the stars with precision. He
wrote that there were no crystalline
spheres powering the planets, the Sun,
the Moon, or the stars; he said that they
all moved around the Earth on their own.
Thomas Blundeville (c. 1522-1602) was
an English scholar; he invented the
protractor. He was a prolific writer on
many subjects. At the age of 79, he
wrote a book on the discovery of the
20
Earth’s magnetic field by Gilbert; in it, he
wrote of how magnetism might relate to
astronomy. He penned attacks on the
model of heliocentrism by Copernicus.
Francesco Giuntini (1523-1590) was an
Italian astronomer; he wrote of the two
books by Sacrobosco. He was the author
of texts on the comet of 1577, as well as
on other issues in astronomy. He was in
favor of reforming the Julian calendar.
Valentinus Naiboda (1523-1593) was a
German mathematician and astrologer;
his real name was Valentin Naboth. In
1573, he wrote a textbook that had all
three models of the Solar System. These
were the Ptolemaic and Copernican, and
the geoheliocentric one by Capella. A
diagram of the last one influenced Tycho
Brahe and, most likely, Paul Wittich.
Naiboda decided that he should stay in
his house after a horoscope that he had
cast said that he would die soon; robbers
would kill him in his home.
The Capellan model (Naiboda 1573)
Tadeas Hajek (1525-1600) was a Czech
astronomer-astrologer; he was also an
alchemist. He was a graduate of both the
universities of Prague and Wittenberg; he
worked at the latter for years. He was a
doctor to Rudolph II, the Holy Roman
Emperor; he had worked for his
predecessor as well.
In that role, he helped Tycho Brahe to get
the job of Imperial Mathematician. He
gave advice to the Emperor on the reform
of the Julian calendar. Hajek was a
skilled observer. He supported the model
by Copernicus that said that the Earth
orbits the Sun. He shared data on comets
and the 1572 supernova with Tycho
Brahe and others.
Caspar Peucer (1525-1602) was a
German theologian and doctor. He was a
mathematician as well; both Reinhold
and Rheticus had trained him in that
field. He shared his notes on the comet
of 1572 with Tycho Brahe and William
IV. The Prince of Saxony imprisoned
him for twelve years for being a ‘Crypto-
Calvinist’; he had been both doctor and
counselor to the prince.
Taqi al-Din (c. 1526-1585) was a Syrian
scientist and engineer; he was also an
astrologer. Fathullah al-Sufi had trained
him, in Egypt; Taqi worked there for the
next two decades. In that time, he
invented advanced machines; one of them
was the first steam turbine.
He built the first clock in the world that
had a second hand; he had designed it to
help measure the right ascension of stars.
It would be more than a century before
clocks in Christian Europe were this
precise. His device was the first
timepiece that was accurate enough for
astronomy. He used it to make
observations of the sky that were at the
time unrivalled in their precision.
Some sources say that the star catalogs
that he wrote were comparable to the one
21
done by Tycho Brahe. The claim is that
the research that Taqi did on solar
eccentricity was as good as the study of it
done by Tycho and better than the work
on it by Copernicus. The same, it is
said, is true of his work on the solar
apogee. In the year 1570, he moved to
Istanbul, to the court of the Ottoman
Sultan, Selim II; he was also known as
‘Selim the Sot.’ The next year Selim
made him his Head Astronomer.
Taqi al-Din
The research done by Ulugh Beg and his
team at the Samarkand Observatory had
influenced Taqi from his youth. He
wanted to surpass their feats (see
Curation Paper Number Four). He
convinced a new sultan to build an
observatory in Istanbul; it was the most
modern in the world at the time. It had
an astronomical clock and other devices
he had invented; one of these was one of
the first telescopes. His observatory has
been called the equal of the one built by
Tycho Brahe; the same is true for the
tools both men used. The Dane knew of
Taqi and his work.
In 1580, a comet appeared over Istanbul;
Taqi said that it was a favorable omen for
the Turks. Instead, a plague ravaged
much of the Empire. Things got worse
for Taqi when it claimed the life of a
member of the court. Most sources say
that religious factions at court encouraged
a backlash against Taqi and his science.
Others say that he was a victim of
political infighting there. When the
plague still spread, the sultan had the
observatory and all that was in it
destroyed. This did not stop the plague.
The Istanbul Observatory
Taqi al-Din stayed on in Istanbul; he built
new tools until his death in five years.
His disgrace was the end of modern math
and science in Turkey for more than two
centuries; this was true for the rest of the
Middle East as well. He has been called
the ‘last great scientist of the Muslim
world.’
John Dee (1527-1609) was an English
astrologer and mathematician; he was
also an alchemist, a mystic, an
astronomer and a royal counselor. He
graduated from Cambridge, and then the
University of Louvain; Gemma Frisius
was one of his teachers there. Dee
rejected the model that the Earth orbits
22
the Sun. Still, he used data from
Copernicus in a proposal he wrote on
how to reform the Julian calendar; the
pope did not use his ideas.
John Dee
Dee was the Royal Astrologer for Queen
Elizabeth I; in that role, he would train a
generation of navigators on how to chart
the stars. He was her main advisor on
many issues; he was one of the first to
urge that the Queen pursue a policy of
imperialism. When the extent of his
mysticism became well known, he was
ostracized. The new king, James I,
banned him from court; after years at the
pinnacle of power, Dee died in poverty.
Paul Hainzel (1527-1581) was a
Bavarian mayor and astronomer. He and
his brother, with the help of Tycho
Brahe, built a quadrant on his estate near
the city of Augsburg. It had a diameter
of nineteen feet; the three of them used it
to observe the 1572 supernova.
Johannes Stadius (1527-1579) was a
Flemish astrologer and mathematician;
his real name was Jan Van Ostaeyen.
Gemma Frisius had trained him. He
supported the model by Copernicus that
said that the Earth orbits the Sun. He
wrote tables that Tycho Brahe would use.
Andreas Schoner (1528-1590) was a
German mathematician; he built sundials
and what some sources call the ‘first
modern celestial globe.’ It showed all of
the known constellations and stars in
their correct locations. He was the Court
Mathematician to Prince William IV.
Tycho Brahe called him ‘the most
important astronomer in Europe.’ He
published works by his father, Johannes.
Daniel Santbech (fl. 1561) was a Dutch
astronomer and mathematician; he
published texts by Regiomontanus as
well as his own works. Both of them had
written of the tools and practices of
astronomy.
Giovanni Benedetti (1530-1590) was an
Italian scientist and astrologer; he
supported Copernicus’ model that the
Earth was in motion, and not the Sun. He
disagreed with the rest of Aristotle’s
physics as well. He proved that the Earth
rotated. He did this with the same
methods that Aristarchus of Samos had
used; this Greek had lived more than a
thousand years earlier.
Conrad Dasypodius (c. 1532-1600) was
a Swiss mathematician and astronomer;
his last name most likely was Hasenfratz.
He promoted some of Copernicus’ ideas,
but he did not endorse the Pole’s model
that the Earth orbits the Sun. He built a
monumental astronomical clock in a
cathedral, in Strasburg, France; it was the
best clock of its kind, in its day.
William IV of Hesse-Kassel (1532-
1592) was a German prince and
astronomer; he and his father were both
leaders of the Protestant cause. His
23
lifelong interest in astronomy began
when he was a youth; a book by Apianus
had been the spark. He did most of his
work in the field before the death of his
father in 1567; his duties as head of state
would take up much of his time after that.
At his death, his father had split Hesse
among his four sons; as a result, William
ruled only the area of the capital, Kassel.
While he was heir to the throne, he had
made that city a center for science in the
Protestant world; he built an observatory
in his father’s palace there. It was the
first in Christian Europe that had a staff
of professional astronomers; it also had
the first rotating dome in the world. He
designed many of the tools used there.
His work proved that metal instruments
were far superior to those made of wood.
Wood was still used for many tools in
astronomy.
William was one of the first men to write
in support of Copernicus’ model that the
Earth orbits the Sun, as do the five
planets. He was as well one of the first to
say that the nova of 1572 and the comet
of 1585 were both at great distances from
the Earth; this contradicted the views of
both Aristotle and Ptolemy. He was one
of the first men in a Christian land to use
clocks in astronomy; he mapped the stars
with them.
He and his staff wrote two star catalogs.
The second one is known as the Hessian
Star Catalog; it was the earliest star
catalog that was based on a systematic
survey of all of the night sky. He had
written it with Rothmann and Burgi.
Some sources say that it was the best star
catalog in the world, at the time.
The catalog would not be published until
the year 1668; by then, it was obsolete.
At the time of its writing, William was a
rival of Tycho Brahe. It and some of the
other work by the prince and his team
were superior in some ways to that done
by the Dane.
William IV of Hesse-Kassel
Hilderich von Varel (1533-1599) was a
German theologian and astronomer; he
was an advocate of Copernicus’ model.
He was the first man in the west of
Europe to translate tracts on astronomy
by Geminus of Rhodes. This Greek had
lived more than 1700 years earlier.
Cornelius Gemma (1535-1577) was a
Dutch doctor and philosopher; he was
also an astrologer and a mathematician.
He was the eldest son of Gemma Frisius;
he published some of what his father had
been working on at the time of his death.
Gemma taught at the University of
Louvain. He observed eclipses; he wrote
one of the first accounts of the supernova
of 1572. He made the first scientific
record of the aurora borealis. Galileo
wrote that he found his data to be
accurate.
Gemma said that the Prutenic Tables and
the model of heliocentrism that they were
24
taken from matched what he saw in the
heavens. He wrote that they were better
than the Alfonsine Tables and the
geocentric view that they represented.
Still, he rejected the model that the Earth
orbits the Sun, as it contradicted what
was in the Bible. He died of the plague
soon after writing a report on calendar
reform for the pope.
Gemma’s illustration of the aurora
Egnatio Danti (1536-1586) was an
Italian bishop and astronomer; he was, as
well, a noted engineer. His real name
was Carlo Pellegrino; his father had been
called ‘Danti,’ which meant ‘clever.’
The nickname was then passed down to
the son. He won fame as one of the
builders of the best tools for astronomy in
Europe; some of them can still be used.
He built two observatories, both of them
in cathedrals; the first was in the city of
Florence. He lived there for years, until
he had to flee after a coup there. He built
the second one in Rome, for the pope.
Danti helped to refute the theory of
trepidation; this would be for the last
time. In 1574, he had found that the
Julian calendar had an error of ten days.
In six years, Pope Gregory XIII named
him to the Reform Commission. In 1582,
the Gregorian calendar used his estimate
of the tropical year.
Egnatio Danti
Christopher Clavius (1538-1612) was a
Bavarian Jesuit; his birth name may have
been Klau. He graduated from the
University of Coimbra. He then attended
the College of Rome; he worked there for
the rest of his life. He led the team that
the pope formed to write the Gregorian
calendar; it will be accurate until 4317.
He was the author of texts on some of
Sacrobosco’s writings; he wrote of
eclipses as well. He said that the
supernova of 1572 proved that the
heavens were not ‘perfect and
unchanging’ as Aristotle had written. He
rejected the model that the Earth moves
and not the Sun; even so, he had used
Copernicus’ data to write much of the
Gregorian calendar.
Clavius refuted the Pole’s idea that the
rate of precession varied. He was also
correct when he wrote that the length of
the tropical year did not vary; Copernicus
had said that it did. In his years at the
College of Rome, he trained many Jesuits
in the sciences. Ricci was the most noted
of these. Once he had used a telescope,
Clavius would say that the Earth did
indeed orbit the Sun.
25
Christopher Clavius. From a 1606
painting by Francesco Villamena
Giovanni Gallucci (1538-c. 1621) was
an astronomer and translator from Italy.
He lived in Venice for most of his life; it
was a center of publishing at the time. In
1588, he wrote what one source has
called ‘the first modern star atlas.’ It had
the 48 constellations from Ptolemy’s
atlas; that book was more than a thousand
years old. Gallucci showed them on star
maps from a book by Copernicus; these
were more precise than the maps by
Ptolemy. It was the first star atlas to
show nebulae; it was as well the first one
to have reliable coordinates.
A paper astrolabe in a book published
in 1598 by Giovanni Gallucci
Gallucci condemned the practice of
astrology and all other ‘superstitions.’
He said that the comet of 1577 was in
deep space, ‘near Mercury,’ and not in
the atmosphere as per the science of
Aristotle. He wrote of how to build
various types of sundials; he invented
tools for use in astronomy.
Pieter Keyser (1540?-1596) was a Dutch
navigator; Plancius had trained him to be
an astronomer. He mapped 135 stars as
well as twelve constellations; these were
all in the Southern hemisphere. He did
this from the island of Madagascar in the
four months it took to repair his ship
there; he sent the data back to his teacher.
This was on the first voyage by the Dutch
to the Orient. Keyser soon died in
Sumatra, of disease.
Elias Morsing (c. 1540-1590) was a
Danish astronomer; one source says that
he was Tycho Brahe’s ‘most capable’
assistant. He helped to write his boss’
first book; he did research for him, first
in Poland, and then in Germany.
Bartholomaus Scultetus (1540-1614)
was a German astronomer and mayor; his
birth name was Barthel Schulz. He was
the first writer in a Protestant land to use
the Gregorian calendar. He wrote of the
comet of 1577. He studied with Tycho
Brahe; he shared data with him and then,
with Kepler. Scultetus was a skilled
maker of tools. He taught astronomy to
Paul Wittich.
David Gans (1541-1613); this scholar
was a German Jew. He conducted many
observations. He translated a copy of the
Alfonsine Tables from Hebrew to
German for Tycho Brahe; this had been
done for Rudolph II. He worked with
both Tycho and Kepler while they were
26
all in Prague. He said that the Sun
moved, not the Earth.
Rodrigo Zamorano (1542-1623) was a
Spanish astronomer and mathematician;
he used some of Copernicus’ data, but he
did not accept the model that the Earth
orbits the Sun. He wrote several texts on
astronomy.
Metius (c. 1543-1620) was a Dutch
engineer; he was also a mathematician
and an astronomer. His real name was
Adriaan Anthonisz; he changed it to the
Dutch word for ‘surveyor.’ He built a
device to determine the position of the
Moon. He wrote of sundials, astrolabes,
and calendars.
William Gilbert (1544-1603) was a
scientist from England; he was a graduate
of Cambridge. He was the Royal
Physician to both Queen Elizabeth I and
her successor, King James I. He held that
post until his death; this may have been
from the plague.
Gilbert wrote one book, De Magnete. In
it, he described the magnetic field of the
Earth; he had discovered it. He wrote
that it caused the planet’s daily rotation.
He said that the magnetism of the Earth
was the source of gravity. He was the
first man to write that the Earth has a core
of iron. He penned attacks on those who
said that the Earth did not rotate.
Gilbert made one of the first known maps
of the Moon; he wrote that the light spots
on it were bodies of water. Most of his
peers thought that the dark areas were the
Moon’s seas. These came to be known
as ‘Mares’; this is the Latin word for
‘seas.’ He made the first scientific study
of electricity; he said that it was not the
same as magnetism. The experiments
that he did on these forces have been
called ‘the first modern science’ and the
‘foundation of modern physics.’
William Gilbert was a strong supporter of
Copernicus. His work influenced Kepler,
Galileo, and others.
William Gilbert, from De Magnete
Thomas Digges (c. 1545-1595) was an
English astronomer; he was also an army
officer and a politician. He was the first
to translate the works of Copernicus from
Latin to English. He did not go to a
university; still, he was well educated, at
first by his father, Leonard Digges, and
then, after he died, by John Dee. He
raised Thomas as his foster son.
Digges supported Copernicus’s model
that the Earth orbits the Sun, but he
differed with him on the stars: The Pole
had written that the stars were a short
distance beyond Saturn. Digges said that
no, the stars were other suns that were far
from the Earth. Both of them thought
that the Sun was the center of the
universe. He was one of the first to write
that the Sun was the same as the stars.
27
Thomas Digges was one of the first men
in a Christian land to write that the stars
were scattered across the heavens; he said
that there was no ‘stellar’ sphere. He said
that the number of stars were infinite; he
wrote that space had no end. He wrote of
the ‘glass’ that his father had built; it was
not used to observe the heavens.
Baha’ ad-Din al-Amili (1546-1620) was
an Arab scholar and poet; he was from
what is now Lebanon. He helped to
revive math in Persia; his family had fled
there in his youth due to persecution of
their religious sect. He penned texts on
astronomy; one was an attempt to mesh
Ptolemy’s ideas with Arabic astronomy.
He said that the Earth most likely rotates
daily. He built an advanced sundial that
still works. It is in the city of Isfahan; he
lived there for much of his life.
Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) was a famed
Danish astrologer and alchemist, his birth
name was Tyge. He was the most precise
astronomer in the Old World before the
use of the telescope. His father was a
nobleman; this meant that his son’s
interest in astronomy was discouraged.
When he was an infant, his aunt and
uncle took him from his home without
his parents’ knowledge; his father had
promised the childless couple his
firstborn son and then reneged on it. His
father, though angry at first, agreed to let
the pair have the boy; this may have been
due to their vast wealth, which Tycho
inherited.
When he was twelve years old, they sent
Tycho to the University of Copenhagen
to study law; he then attended law
schools at the universities of Leipzig,
Wittenberg, and Rostock. When he was
nineteen, he lost much of his nose in a
duel fought with swords. It had been
held in the dark; most sources say that it
was over who was better at math. From
the next year on, he wore a prosthetic; he
most likely used one of lightweight
copper most of the time. Tycho is said to
have had others to wear on ‘special days’;
these are thought to have had silver or
gold in them.
A portrait of Tycho Brahe
He had watched a solar eclipse at the age
of thirteen; it was the start of his interest
in astronomy. Three years later, he found
that tables by both Ptolemy and
Copernicus had missed a conjunction.
He vowed that he could do better than
both of them had. His first job, while he
was still in law school, was as an
assistant astronomer to the mayor of
Augsburg. Tycho helped him build a
quadrant that had a radius of nineteen
feet; he later wrote that readings taken
with it were not accurate. He may have
also built a celestial globe for the mayor.
When he saw the supernova of 1572, his
decision to be an astronomer was
reaffirmed. He wrote his first book, De
28
Nova Stella, the next year; in it, he
proved that the supernova was as distant
as the stars. He was the first to use the
term ‘nova’; it is Latin for ‘new star.’
Aristotle had said that what we call novae
were in the atmosphere of the Earth; he
wrote that comets were there as well.
Tycho proved that the comet of 1572 had
moved in space, and not the atmosphere.
This meant that the crystalline spheres
that Ptolemy had said moved the planets,
the Sun, and the Moon could not exist. If
the spheres were real, Tycho wrote, they
would have slowed or stopped its passage
and that of all comets. He showed that
comets orbit the Sun, and not the Earth.
In 1574, he visited William IV at Kassel;
the work done by the prince and his staff
impressed Tycho. The state of the art
observatory there also made an impact on
him. The next year, he began building
the most modern observatory in the world
at that time; it was on the small isle of
Hven. The King of Denmark gave Hven
to Tycho, to keep him from moving to
Switzerland as he had said that he might.
Tycho built a paper mill and printing
press on Hven to support his work.
His work there consumed as much as two
percent of the Danish national budget for
years. Tycho committed most of his
immense wealth to it as well. Some
sources say that he controlled as much as
two percent of the country’s gross
domestic product. From the year 1580,
when the first observatory on Hven
opened, to May of 1597, when he made
his last observations there, he did
research that was without precedent in
both its scope and its quality.
Tycho named the observatory Uraniborg.
In Danish, this meant, ‘Castle of Urania’;
she was the Muse of astronomy in Greek
mythology. Some sources say that it was
the ‘first modern research center.’ It was
there that he calculated the length of the
tropical year to within a second. This
was by far the best estimate of it yet.
For most of the years that he was there,
he had a hundred or more students or
assistants working for him at any one
time. Some of them helped to operate the
tools that he had designed. One of these
was a mural quadrant; it had a radius of
almost six feet. He had two freestanding
quadrants of the same size. He used all
three to track the stars and planets.
Uraniborg
He wrote a catalog of 777 stars while he
was at Hven; it was the first one in the
Christian world that did not have data
from Ptolemy. The Greek’s records were
inferior to his; they were badly out of
date as well. Tycho was the first in a
Christian land who wrote a star catalog
that used only his own research; it was
the best in the world, at the time.
In the year 1584, he built a smaller
observatory; he called it Stjerneborg,
which is Danish for ‘Star Castle.’ Most
29
of its instruments were below ground; he
had shown that this improved the quality
of the readings done with them. Both
observatories had the best tools of the
day; with them, he was as precise as one
arc minute in most of his observations.
Some sources say that he may have
exaggerated some of his results; this, they
say, was most likely done to get more
funding.
Stjerneborg, c. 1590
Life at Hven was not all toil; Tycho was
famous for his parties. One highlight of
these was his court jester; he was a ‘little
person’ named Jepp who Tycho thought
was clairvoyant. He made Jepp sit by
him under the table until the Dane felt it
was time for him to make a prediction.
Tycho also had a pet elk (or moose).
Similar to his owner, it was not afraid of
beer. One night, a friend took it to the
house of another nobleman for drinks.
As it left the party, the elk (or moose) fell
down the steps; it soon died.
Tycho had been a supporter of the model
of heliocentrism. In the year 1588, he
finished his study of comets; he felt that
their motions showed that Copernicus
was mistaken. From this, and his
religious beliefs, Tycho would reject the
idea that the Earth orbits the Sun. The
Pole had written that crystalline spheres
powered the planets and other celestial
objects; Tycho had then shown that they
did not exist. This led the Dane to doubt
much of the rest of what he had said.
The Isle of Hven in Tycho’s time;
Uraniborg is in its center. Stjerneborg
is in the lower right of the island
Tycho wrote that the Ptolemaic system,
which said that the universe orbits a point
near the Earth, was also incorrect. This
would lead him to create the ‘Tychonic’
model. He wrote that the five planets
orbit the Sun. He said that comets do as
well; the Sun he said, circles the Earth, as
do the Moon and the stars. The Catholic
Church took up his views as a counter to
the model of heliocentrism; this was
because it did not challenge what was in
the Bible.
Tycho said that the path of Mars crosses
that of the Sun; no one else said this.
There was no evidence for this at that
time, but he was correct. He did agree
with Copernicus that all orbits were
perfectly circular. Tycho erred as well
when he wrote that the stars were only 55
million miles from the Earth; this was
closer than Ptolemy said that they were.
30
In the year 1597, a new king, weary of
Tycho’s arrogance, and of what he had
cost the crown, canceled the subsidy that
paid for most of the work at Hven.
Tycho had grown more and more erratic,
and his cruelty to his assistants and
towards some of the peasants of the isle
had increased; he had placed some of the
serfs in chains.
The Tychonic model: ‘A’ is the Earth,
‘B’ is the Moon, and ‘C’ is the Sun
He would continue to work, even as he
had to travel from place to place. In
1599, Rudolph II made him the Imperial
Mathematician; this Habsburg ruled the
Holy Roman Empire from the city of
Prague. Tycho moved all of his notes
and equipment to the observatory that
Rudolph had built for him near there. He
worked in it for a year, and then moved
to Prague, to be a part of the court.
Tycho’s last assistant, Johannes Kepler,
said that his boss’ refusal to ask for leave,
so he could go to the bathroom, at a
dinner party (due to reluctance on his part
to offend his host) led to a burst bladder.
He was dead after eleven days of agony.
Some historians think that he died from
uremia; it is due to kidney failure.
Analysis of samples of his hair suggests
that the cause was mercury poisoning.
Tycho Brahe and Rudolph II, by
Eduard Ender (1855)
If this killed Tycho, it most likely was an
accident; he had used it for years in his
work as an alchemist. He may have
swallowed mercury in an attempt to cure
his kidneys; if so, it may have been the
true cause of death. The claims that
Kepler or the King of Denmark poisoned
him seem to be without merit. Some
sources say that the king wanted revenge
due to his belief that Tycho had had an
affair with the king’s mother. The king,
they say, thought that he might be
Tycho’s son.
As Tycho lay dying, he asked Kepler to
finish the Rudolphine Tables that they
both had been writing. He said that he
hoped that Kepler would abandon his
belief in Copernicus’ model for Tycho’s
views. His last words, said repeatedly in
his dying delirium, were, “May I not
seem to have lived in vain.”
Kepler fought to keep Tycho’s records,
instead of giving them to the Dane’s
heirs; he lost in courts of law, but it
would take years. All the while, he used
data from Tycho’s years at Hven and
Prague to write the Laws of Planetary
Motion as well as the Rudolphine Tables.
31
Both of these works played a crucial role
in proving the model of heliocentrism;
they also helped to discredit Tycho’s
ideas.
Johannes Kepler
Paul Wittich (1546-1586) was a Silesian
mathematician and astronomer; he
worked in the city of Breslau for most of
his life. He altered the model written by
Copernicus; he said that Mercury and
Venus orbit the Sun. The Sun he wrote,
circles the Earth, as do the Moon, the
other planets, and the stars. This was the
same as in an allegory by Martianus
Capella; he had lived more than a
thousand years earlier. Wittich said that
Mars’ orbit did not intersect that of the
Sun.
He wrote to Hayek, Saville, and others on
issues of astronomy. In the year 1580, he
briefly worked for Tycho Brahe. He
most likely helped to inspire the Dane to
write his own model of the Solar System.
From Hven, he went to Kassel; he
worked for William IV there. The prince
was by this time a rival to Tycho.
William rewarded Wittich when he
shared some of the data and methods that
he had learned while he was at Hven;
Tycho was furious. In revenge, he
omitted the role that Wittich had played
in the origin of the Tychonic model in his
book on it. Using the Dane’s designs as a
guide, Wittich helped Joost Burgi build
tools. One of these was an astrolabe that
he gave to the prince.
Wittich’s alteration of a diagram in his
copy of Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus
Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was an
Italian priest and mystic; his real name
was Filippo Bruno. He changed his
given name to Giordano when he became
a monk; it had been his mentor’s name.
Bruno was a loud advocate of the model
that the Earth orbits the Sun, even if he
did not fully understand it. He said that
the universe had no end; he wrote that the
stars were other suns. He said that each
star had planets of its own. Some of
these, he wrote, were similar to the Earth.
He said that the number of both stars and
inhabited planets was infinite. He wrote
that there was life on these planets; some
of them had beings as advanced as that
on Earth. He was the first man to say all
of this since Democritus of Abdera; he
had lived almost two thousand years
earlier. Bruno taught these theories, and
more, for years at the College of Rome.
32
He was most noted for his nemonic
methods; a future pope was one of his
students.
Giordano Bruno
In the year 1576, he was accused of
heresy; he would spend the next fifteen
years in exile. In 1591, he returned to
Italy; he may have assumed he was no
longer a wanted man. The next year, one
of his patrons in Venice turned on him,
and then gave him to the Roman
Inquisition. After a year of questioning,
they sent Bruno to Rome; the Church
held him there for eight more years.
He was defiant at what they called his
trial. Sentenced to death at the stake, he
had eight more days to confess; if he
recanted, his life would be spared. When
he refused to do so, they pierced his
tongue with an iron spike; a second one
was driven into his palate. They paraded
Bruno through the streets of Rome to a
market square. He was stripped, and then
burned at the stake, alive. Most of those
sent to the stake were strangled first; he
was not shown this final act of mercy.
They threw his ashes away.
Bas-relief of Giordano Bruno’s trial
The Church did not kill Giordano Bruno
for his belief in heliocentrism; it did not
ban that model for another sixteen years.
Nor did his view on life beyond the Earth
doom him. Neither was he punished for
saying that each race had its own ‘Adam
and Eve.’
He died for his ‘theological errors.’ It is
unclear what he was charged with; his
file was lost long ago. The Church has
banned his writings since 1603. In the
year 2000, the Papacy wrote a defense of
its actions in his demise; it blamed his
death on the secular authorities who had
carried out the verdict of the Church.
Dinkara (fl. 1578-1583) was a Hindu
astronomer; he wrote astronomical tables.
He penned a text on how to make a
calendar. He described the motions and
longitudes of the celestial objects.
Henry Saville (1549-1622) was an
English mathematician and astronomer.
He played a key role in the revival of
scholarship in Oxford; he founded one of
its astronomy professorships. He was the
first there to teach Copernicus’ model
that the Earth moves, and not the Sun.
He did not endorse it, but it was a part of
his curriculum for years. He wrote to
condemn the practice of astrology.
33
Michael Maestlin (1550-1631) was a
German; he was just the second
astronomer to support Copernicus’ model
that the Earth rotates as it orbits the Sun.
Before he had heard of the Pole’s work,
he had written a book in favor of the
model by Ptolemy; many would read it.
He would then be one of the most
effective champions of heliocentrism. He
worked at the University of Tubingen for
most of his life. He had first won fame
for his study of the comet of 1577 while
he was still a student there.
Michael Maestlin
Michael Maestlin was the first man to say
that comets orbit the Sun; he wrote that
they were between the Earth and Venus.
His studies of the supernova of 1572 and
his work on comets were both as good as
that by Tycho; Maestlin’s words
influenced the work the Dane did on
both. He cataloged the Pleiades. He was
a mentor to Kepler; he influenced
Galileo. Maestlin was the first man to
tell Kepler of the model that the Earth
orbits the Sun; he may have been the first
to write to Galileo on it as well.
Acyuta Pisarati (c. 1550-1621) was a
Hindu astrologer and mathematician; he
improved on the model of planetary
longitudes that Somayaji wrote decades
earlier. He wrote in praise of the
planetary theory that his predecessor had
written; they both worked at the Kerala
School.
Nicolaus Reimers (1551-1600) was a
German astronomer and mathematician;
he was the Imperial Mathematician to
Rudolph II before Tycho Brahe was.
Most sources say that he plagiarized the
Tychonic model; Tycho was the first to
have accused him of doing so. Reimers
made changes to it: He said that the path
of Mars did not intersect that of the Sun.
He said that the Earth rotated; this was an
improvement to the model, as the Dane
had written that the Earth did not move.
Joost Burgi (1552-1632) was a Swiss
clockmaker and mathematician;
Dasypodius had trained him, at the
University of Strasburg. He then went to
Kassel to work for William IV; he was
the main builder of astronomical tools for
the prince. He won fame for these,
especially for his clocks; they were
accurate to within a minute a day. This
allowed for their use in astronomy; this
was a first in the Christian world.
While Burgi was at Kassel, he worked
with both Rothmann and the prince. The
three of them wrote what some call the
‘first modern astronomical charts.’ He
invented the mechanized celestial globe;
he built a clock for Tycho Brahe. In
1600, he moved to Prague, to join the
court of Rudolph II; he worked with
Kepler there.
Jorgen Dybvad (died 1612) was a
Danish scholar and astrologer. He
graduated from the University of
Wittenberg; one of his teachers there was
Peucer. He was the first Dane to write in
34
support of the model of heliocentrism;
still, he taught Ptolemy’s model while he
was at the University of Copenhagen. He
did use Copernicus’ theory of lunar
motions and not the one by Ptolemy.
Petrus Plancius (1552-1622) was a
Flemish cleric and astronomer, as well as
a navigator and mapmaker. His true
name was Pieter Platevoet. He had fled
to Holland in the Eighty Years’ War.
There, he built the first celestial globes
that showed the constellations and stars
of the southern hemisphere. Much of the
data he used came from navigators that
he had trained to map the sky.
Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) was an Italian
Jesuit; Clavius was one of his teachers at
the College of Rome. He then worked as
a missionary for four years in the city of
Goa, India; it was a Portuguese colony at
the time. While he was there, he might
have learned of some of the work at the
Kerala School; this may have influenced
his views.
Then, in the year 1582, he was
transferred to China; he brought the
science of Europe to that land. He had
with him the first modern map of the
world seen there; he was also the first in
China to teach modern trigonometry. In
1601, he went to Beijing; he was the first
from a foreign land to enter the
‘Forbidden City’ there. He soon was the
Court Mathematician; he then worked in
the Imperial Astronomy Bureau. He
traveled widely in China; he was the first
man from the West to do so since the
Mongols had ruled that land. He was the
first from the Western world to make
precise maps of the ‘Middle Kingdom.’
Ricci was fluent in Chinese; he wrote
twenty works of science in it. He dressed
in local garb; his Chinese name, Li-ma-
teu Hsi-ju, meant ‘Wise Man of the
West.’ He supported Copernicus’ model
that the Earth orbits the Sun. Thanks to
the Pole’s data, he could predict eclipses
much better than could the Chinese
emperor’s astronomers and astrologers.
His skill with math and science helped to
win many converts to Christianity there.
A 1610 portrait of Matteo Ricci
Peder Jacobsen Flemlos (c. 1554-1598)
was a Danish doctor and astronomer; he
was able to work for Tycho Brahe longer
than anyone else could do it. He
observed the sky for him from Norway
and Germany, as well as from Poland.
Jakob Christmann (1554-1613) was a
German Jew; he became a Christian as an
adult. He was an orientalist; he published
tables by Rheticus. He translated from
Arabic some of the texts on astronomy by
al-Farghani. He taught math and
astronomy at the University of
Heidelberg. He shared data with Kepler.
Christoph Rothmann (c. 1555-1605?)
was a German mathematician and
35
astronomer. He was the main astronomer
for William IV in Kassel for years; he
worked with Burgi there as well. He was
one of the first there to support the model
of heliocentrism. With time, he
convinced most of his coworkers of the
fact that the Earth orbits the Sun. He
wrote much of the Hessian Star Catalog.
Some sources say that it was better than
the catalog by Tycho Brahe; much of the
praise it earns is due to Rothmann’s
work.
He studied comets; he wrote that these
moved ‘beyond the Moon’ and not in the
atmosphere as Aristotle had said that they
did. Rothmann did err when he said that
comets are vapors from the Earth. He
wrote on atmospheric refraction as well,
as did Tycho Brahe. His work on it has
also been called better than that by the
Dane. In 1590, he left Kassel to work for
Tycho. He was at Hven for just a month;
from then on, he wrote of only religious
issues.
Giovanni Magini (1555-1617) was an
Italian mathematician and astronomer.
He replaced Danti as the chair of math at
the University of Bologna; he got the job
instead of Galileo. He rejected
Copernicus’ model that the Earth, and not
the Sun, was in motion. He did say that
the Pole had made some valid points.
He was one of the best builders of tools
for astronomy in all of Europe. He
published what some sources say was the
first ‘true modern atlas.’ He used data
from both Tycho and Kepler to write a
geocentric model; no one used it. He
shared data with them and later, Galileo.
He wrote astronomical tables.
Thomas Hood (1556-1620) was an
English mathematician and doctor; he
was one of the first at Oxford to teach
Copernicus’ model that the Earth circles
the Sun. He recorded the supernova of
1572; he built new types of tools for use
in astronomy.
Sophia Brahe (1557-1643) was a Danish
scholar; she was the youngest of ten
children. She helped her brother Tycho
write a star catalog. They studied
eclipses and planetary orbits for nine
years. He had tutored her in chemistry
and horticulture, but she learned
astronomy on her own. She helped him
cast horoscopes until the year 1597. She
was the first female astronomer of note in
more than 1200 years; the last one was
the Greek scholar Hypatia of Alexandria.
She had been flayed while still alive (see
Curation Paper Number Two).
Sophia Brahe
As with her brother, due to her status as a
member of the nobility, Sophia was told
that astronomy was beneath her. Tycho
was one of those who had tried to
dissuade her; he later wrote of his pride
in her skill in the science. The rest of the
family did not support her dream. They
cut her off after her second marriage; this
was to a penniless alchemist whom she
36
had met at Hven. After being a widow
for the second time, she supported her
children and herself by writing
genealogies.
Philippus Lansbergen (1561-1634) was
a Dutch cleric and mathematician; he was
also an astronomer, a politician and a
doctor. He wrote a book in support of
Copernicus’ model that the Earth moved,
and not the heavens; he was the first in
Holland to do so. His book was a
success; his words helped to convince
many of its readers that heliocentrism
was the truth. He was a critic of the
theory that said that orbits are elliptical;
still, Kepler would use his tables.
Duncan Liddel (1561-1613) was a
Scottish doctor and astronomer; one of
his teachers was Tycho Brahe. Liddel
then worked at several universities in
Germany. He taught all three models of
the Solar System: The one written by
Ptolemy, Copernicus’ system, and the
recent effort by Tycho Brahe.
Longomontanus (1562-1647) was an
astronomer from Denmark; his real name
was Christian Severin. As was common
with scholars in Europe at the time, he
took a Latin version of the name of his
birthplace; in his case, this was the
village of Lomborg. He was eight years
old when his father, a laborer, died. At
the age of fifteen, he ran away from
home, in order to get an education. He
was poor but the Lutheran Church sent
him to the University of Copenhagen; he
taught astronomy there.
Longomontanus was the best known of
the disciples of Tycho Brahe; he was his
only long-term student as well. He
worked for eight years at Hven; he then
went with Tycho to Prague. There, he
helped his mentor map the orbit of the
Moon. In 1622, he wrote the only book
that detailed the Tychonic model. He
said that the Earth rotated; this made his
work superior to that by Tycho Brahe.
His book, and the tables that he wrote in
support of it, helped make the Tychonic
system popular for years. He wrote that
comets were evil omens.
Longomontanus (Christen Severin)
Gellio Sasceride (1562-1612) was a
Danish astronomer and doctor; he was
one of those who worked for Tycho
Brahe on the island of Hven. In the year
1590, he gave Galileo, who was a friend
of his, the first book on the model of
heliocentrism that the Italian owned.
Xu Guangqi (1562-1633) was a Chinese
scientist. He was the first scholar from
his homeland who worked with a
counterpart of his from Europe; this was
the Jesuit, Matteo Ricci. He converted
Xu and many others to Christianity. Xu
was one of the first in his country to be
converted by the Jesuits. He learned of
modern science from them. Xu then
made reforms to the Chinese calendar.
He could predict eclipses with precision.
37
Xu Guangqi
David Fabricius (1564-1617) was a
German cleric and astronomer; he was
also an astrologer and a mapmaker. His
birth name was most likely either Faber
or Goldschmidt. He discovered the star
Mira in 1596. As it faded with time, he
thought that it was a nova; when it re-
appeared in thirteen years, he realized
that it was not. Mira is the first known
periodic variable star. He had seen it
with a camera obscura both times it had
shown; he mapped sunspots with these
tools as well.
He visited Tycho Brahe at Hven and
then, Prague; he formed a friendship with
Kepler while they were both there. The
two parted ways in the year 1608 due to
his support of the Tychonic model, this
had angered his more famous friend.
Kepler wrote that he thought that his
former colleague might plagiarize some
of his work. In nine years, Fabricius was
killed by a shovel blow to the head. He
had preached against a member of his
church who he said had stolen a goose.
Laurentius Gothus (1565-1646) was a
Swedish archbishop; he was also an
astronomer. Liddel was one of his
teachers at the University of Rostock; the
Swede was influenced by him as well as
by the writings of Petrus Ramus. He
returned to Sweden; he helped to advance
the state of astronomy there by more than
a century. He was a believer in
astrology. He said that comets were
forces of evil.
Li Zhizao (1565-1630) was a Chinese
scientist; he was one of the first Christian
converts there. He translated to Chinese
scientific works that the Jesuits gave him.
He brought the idea back to China that
Earth was both a sphere and in motion.
For all of its history, scholars there had
said that the (flat) Earth was immobile.
Willem Blaeu (1571-1638) was a Dutch
scientist; in the year 1600, he discovered
the second known variable star, P. Cygni.
Willem Blaeu
He had been an assistant to Tycho Brahe
on the isle of Hven for a year; he made
globes and tools for the Dane. He built a
planetarium and a quadrant once he was
back in Holland. He had his own
printing press there. He published
38
scientific tracts; these included his own
maps and other works.
Fredrick de Houtman (1571-1627) was
a Dutch explorer; he was on the first
expedition from Holland to East Asia. In
that time, he helped Keyser to map
twelve new constellations while they
were both on the island of Madagascar.
They had to stay there for ship repairs.
Two years after that, while he was on the
second voyage by the Dutch to the Orient
he mapped 196 stars. He did this from a
prison on Sumatra; he was held there for
two years.
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was a
renowned German astronomer and
mathematician; he was also an astrologer.
He wrote that his birth had been
premature; he said that this caused him to
have health problems for all of his life.
The worst ailment was smallpox; it left
him with weak eyesight and crippling
pain in his hands. He wrote that as a
result, he was never able to be a good
observer of the sky.
Most sources say that he was five years
old when his father vanished. He was a
part-time mercenary. He may have died
in battle, but Kepler wrote that he had
deserted the family. His mother had to
run her father’s tavern to make ends
meet; her son had a low opinion of both
her and her parents.
Kepler showed such skill at math, first at
the tavern and then in school, that he won
a scholarship to the University of
Tubingen. After he had graduated, he
taught astronomy at the University of
Graz. He had hoped to enter the
ministry, but he was too poor. He had
seen the comet of 1577 when he was six
years old, but he did not have a life-long
dream of being an astronomer.
A portrait of Kepler done in 1610
He published his first book, Mysterium
Cosmographicum, in 1596; it was the
first math-based defense of Copernicus’
model that the Earth orbits the Sun. Only
a few would read it, but it brought him to
the attention of Tycho Brahe. In four
years, Kepler joined him at his
observatory near Prague to be one of his
math assistants. He was soon promoted
to mapping the orbit of the planet Mars
for the Dane; this was a key task.
Once Tycho had died, Kepler replaced
him as Imperial Mathematician; this was
what the Dane had wanted. He used
Tycho’s data, from Hven and Prague, to
write both the Laws of Planetary Motion
and the Rudolphine Tables. Kepler had
said, in a letter to a friend, that he had no
right to Tycho’s notes; that did not stop
him from fighting the heirs to keep them.
He lost in a lengthy court battle, but by
the time it was resolved he had used the
records to disprove the Tychonic model.
This did not discredit it with most people.
39
In the twelve years that he was in Prague,
Kepler expanded Tycho’s catalog from
777 stars to 1005. He then added 400
more stars from the star catalog by
Ptolemy as well as the one that Bayer had
just written. In 1604, Kepler wrote of the
supernova that had appeared in the sky
that year. He proved that it and all novae
were far from the Earth; they were not in
the atmosphere as Aristotle had said. It is
often called ‘Kepler’s nova.’
The remnant of the Supernova of 1604
Three years later, Kepler used cameras
obscura to observe sunspots. At first, he
had mistaken the initial one for the planet
Mercury. He gave the camera obscura its
name. He wrote that when he put a lens
in the hole of one, he started to
understand how the human eye worked.
He went on to found the modern science
of optics. In 1609, Kepler published
Astronomia nova; it had two of his three
Laws of Planetary Motion. He had
written it four years earlier, but his fight
with Tycho’s heirs had delayed it.
In 1612, Rudolph II was overthrown by
his younger brother. The new emperor
ordered Kepler and the rest of his court to
convert to Catholicism; instead, Kepler
moved his family from Prague to the city
of Linz. While he was there, he kept his
post as Imperial Mathematician. After
seven years in Linz, he published
Harmonice Mundi; it had the third of his
Laws of Planetary Motion.
With his laws, Kepler had shown that all
orbits are elliptical; this was a key part of
the way that the Solar System works. He
also proved that the theory that the Moon
governs the Earth’s tides was correct.
Seleucus of Seleucia had first proposed it
more than 1700 years earlier.
Kepler finished writing the Rudolphine
Tables in 1623; as part of his settlement
with Tycho’s heirs, they now had the
right to edit all of his work. The tables
were not published for four more years.
They were the best in the world at that
time; they were more than 30 times as
precise as any earlier astronomical tables.
The Rudolphine Tables were the first to
have logarithmic tables. They were also
the first to correct for all of the effects of
atmospheric refraction. Tycho had dealt
with it, but only for the lowest twenty
degrees of the sky for stars and for the
first 45 degrees for other objects.
Kepler’s deeds belie the turmoil of his
times, as well as in his life; he would be
poor for most of his years. By the year
1615, he had buried his first wife and five
of his children. For the next six years, he
had to spend much of his time and funds
in a successful defense of his aged
mother on a charge of witchcraft. She
was an herbal healer; this had made her
the subject of gossip for years. Smallpox
had killed his second wife and a daughter
in those same years.
These woes and more most likely helped
to bring on his early death. It came while
he was trying to collect money that he
40
said he was owed. All sign of his grave
disappeared in six years; the Swedish
army had razed the churchyard that held
it.
A portrait of Johannes Kepler, 1627
Johannes Kepler had played a key role in
the growth of astronomy in the early days
of telescopes. He is called the ‘father’ of
both celestial mechanics and celestial
physics. He wrote the book, Somnium; it
is called ‘the first work of science fiction’
by most sources.
Kepler is honored as ‘The First Modern
Astronomer,’ but as with Copernicus, he
mixed science with mysticism. He said
that the Earth had a soul; he thought that
God reveals the secrets of the universe
through geometry. He was a staunch
defender of most forms of astrology. He
cast horoscopes for himself and his
family; he also did it to make a living.
He lived in a time when astrology was at
one of its heights.
His triumphs would lead to the advances
by Newton and others, in both math and
science. The works of Johannes Kepler
were integral to the Scientific
Revolution; one source says that he was
the ‘central figure’ in that revolution.
Jacob Metius (1571-1635) was a Dutch
mathematician and astronomer. His real
name was Jacob Adriaanszoon; he was
the younger brother of Metius. He
worked for Tycho Brahe at Hven, briefly.
He built tools for use in astronomy there,
and after he returned to Holland; the most
noted of these was one of the first
telescopes. He taught astronomy. He
denounced astrology.
Diego de Pantoja (1571-1618) was a
Spanish Jesuit; he worked in China for
the last twenty years of his life. There, he
and de Ursis predicted a solar eclipse that
the astronomers who worked for the
Emperor had not foreseen. The two
Jesuits then tried, in vain, to reform the
calendar used there at the time; they had
to flee from the backlash. The Chinese
exiled them to the Portuguese colony of
Macao.
Johann Bayer (1572-1625) was a
Bavarian lawyer and astronomer. In the
year 1603, he wrote the first star catalog
to show the stars of the Southern
hemisphere; it was as well the first to
have the first twelve constellations from
there.
He had used data from the star catalog
Tycho Brahe had written to update the 48
constellations used by Ptolemy. Bayer
was the first man to use Greek letters for
the brightest stars. Soon, all atlases
would adopt this format; it is still used.
Simon Marius (1573-1624) was a
Bavarian astronomer. His birth name
was Simon Mayr; he wrote astronomical
tables. He wrote of the comet of 1596 as
41
well as the supernova of 1604. He was a
rival to Galileo; he supported the
Tychonic system and not the model that
the Earth orbits the Sun. He worked with
Tycho Brahe at the court of Rudolph II;
this was in the city of Prague.
Simon Marius
In 1605, he was the court mathematician
and doctor of the Duke of Ansbach; it
was a minor state in Germany. In four
years, the duke built an observatory for
him. Marius was one of the first to view
the sky through a telescope. He made
major finds with it; in 1614, he named
the four ‘Galilean’ moons of Jupiter. He
said that he, and not Galileo, was the first
to see them; there is no evidence for this.
Xing Yunlu (1573-1620) was a Chinese
administrator and astronomer; he was
also a poet. He built a gnomon that was
66 feet tall. He used it as well as other
tools to calculate the tropical year to
within 2.3 seconds. This is more than
twenty-three seconds as precise as the
Gregorian calendar year. He proposed
reforms for the calendar used in China,
but it was in vain.
Sabatino de Ursis (1575-1620) was an
Italian Jesuit; he assisted Ricci and Xu
Guangqi as they brought the science of
Europe to China for the first time. He
and de Pantoja predicted a solar eclipse
there with success. They had to flee for
their lives when they tried to reform
China’s calendar.
Peter Cruger (1580-1639) was a
German scientist, philosopher, and poet.
He was a student of Tycho Brahe and
then Kepler. He wrote in favor of
Copernicus’ model that the Earth circles
the Sun. He built tools for astronomy.
Jan Brozek (1585-1652) was a Polish
mathematician and astronomer; he
worked at the Jagiellonian University.
He taught Ptolemy’s model of the Solar
System to his students, but he was a
supporter of the model that the Earth
moved, not the Sun. He collected all of
the notes and unpublished papers of
Copernicus. He had hoped to write the
first biography of the famous Pole. After
his death, none of those documents was
ever found.
Jan Brozek
42
EPILOGUE: TRADITIONAL ASTRONOMY IN ASIA (1603-1904)
Munisvara (born 1603) was a Hindu
astronomer and mathematician; he was a
prolific writer. He disputed the model of
precession as used by Kamalakara. He
penned criticisms of some of the theories
written long before by Bhaskara II.
Mulla Mahmud Jaunpuri (1606-1651)
was a Mughal philosopher; he was the
first man in India to write a challenge to
Ptolemy’s model. He showed that the
velocities of the planets, the Sun, and the
Moon all varied more than the Greek had
said that they did.
Kamalakara (c. 1616-c. 1700) was a
Hindu astronomer and mathematician; he
tried to mesh the views of both Aristotle
and Ptolemy with the astronomy of India.
He was the author of books on
astronomy; in one of them, he wrote of
diurnal motion as well as on eclipses. He
revived the idea in India that the Pole star
was not true north. He and Munisvara
were foes.
Wang Hsi-Shan (1628-1682) was a
Chinese astronomer. He wrote tables that
used the Tychonic model; they helped
him to be the first in his homeland who
could predict both solar transits and
planetary occultations. He did not use
telescopes, but he tried to adapt the rest
of Western astronomy to Chinese
methods. He improved on Tycho’s work
by adding epicycles to its orbits.
Jagannatha Samrat (1652-1744) was a
Hindu astronomer and mathematician; he
was one of the first in India who stressed
observation over theory in astronomy.
He was Jai Singh’s Court Astronomer; in
that role, he translated a version of the
Almagest to Sanskrit for the prince; al-
Tusi had written it in Persian centuries
earlier. Samrat would not use telescopes;
he was still able to do precise work.
Jai Singh II (1688-1743) was a Hindu
prince and astronomer; he tried to bring
the science of Europe to his homeland.
He was well versed in the astronomy of
India by the age of thirteen; Samrat had
been his tutor. He also studied the
science of the Muslim world.
He ruled the state of Jaipur; it was called
Amber at the time. He was a vassal of
the Mughal Emperor, Muhammad Shah;
he encouraged Jai Singh to pursue his
dream of modernizing astronomy in
India. To this end, the prince built five
observatories; four of them still stand.
Each of them had monumental gnomons
and other types of fixed devices; many of
them were of his own design. He used
astrolabes, quadrants, and other tools.
Jai Singh II
The results that he and his staff achieved
at them were as reliable as any that could
be done with the inferior telescopes in the
country at that time. He used data from
Ulugh Beg in much of his work; he wrote
tables that were based on that prince’s
43
research. These were the last widely read
astronomical tables in the world written
without the use of telescopes.
Jai Singh sent a team to Portugal, in part
to buy tools for astronomy there. He
used telescopes that the Jesuits had given
him, but the results dissatisfied him. He
was, as well, disappointed with the tables
that he had written based on the work by
Ulugh Beg. He set up a translation bureau
for scientific texts that had been written
in Persian or Arabic. He had the largest
library in India; it is still in existence.
Mirza Khairullah Muhandis (fl. c.
1720) was a Hindu scholar and poet; he
designed Jai Singh’s observatories. He
helped to update Ulugh Beg’s tables for
the prince as well. He wrote that the
paths that the Sun and the other celestial
objects take around the Earth might be
ellipses. He most likely did not know of
Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion.
A sundial at the observatory in Delhi
Kevalarama (died 1782) this Hindu was
the ‘Astronomer Royal’ for Jai Singh.
He calculated the tropical year to within
three minutes for him; this was the best
estimate of it yet in India. He translated
Ulugh Beg’s tables from Persian to
Sanskrit for the prince. He converted
modern astronomical tables from Europe
as well; these were in French.
Sankara Varman (1800-1838) was a
Hindu astronomer and mathematician; he
was the last known scholar of the Kerala
School. It had been founded more than
400 years earlier. He wrote a history of
both math and astronomy in India.
Samanta Chandrasekhar (1835-1904)
this Hindu was a self-taught astronomer;
he was a precise observer of the sky. He
lived in a remote area in the east of India;
he had never learned of telescopes or the
model of heliocentrism. He studied the
sky for years; he wrote a geoheliocentric
model of the Solar System.
In this work, he said that both Mercury
and Venus orbit the Sun. He wrote that
the Sun, the planets, and the stars all
circle the Earth; this is the same as the
Capellan model. He built tools of wood
and bamboo; in the year 1874, he used
them to predict a solar transit by the
planet Venus. His precision in this won
him honors. These came from the British
government as well as European
scientists. Almanacs in his home state
still use his data.
Samanta Chandrasekhar
44
GLOSSARY- THE TRIUMPH OF EUROPE (c. 1500-1652)
Akbar: Was the third Mughal Emperor;
he was the son and heir of Humayun. He
lived from 1542 to 1605; he made the
Mughals the dominant power in what are
now India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
Alchemy: This is the belief that physical
properties or objects are subject to
manipulation. This, it was thought, could
produce other types of matter or
conditions; even immortality was seen as
possible. Alchemy most likely began in
ancient Egypt; since then, much of it has
centered on the pursuit of producing gold
or other precious minerals from common
materials.
Until the eighteenth century, most of
those in Europe saw it as a valid science.
Much of modern chemistry has its roots
in alchemy. Tycho Brahe and Isaac
Newton were just two of the many men
of their time who were alchemists.
Alexander VI: This Spaniard was born
Rodrigo Lanzol de Borgia in 1431. He
was the pope from 1492 to his death in
1503; his rule was one long scandal.
Alfonsine Tables: Are astronomical
tables that were prepared by a team of
Jewish scholars on the orders of King
Alfonso X of Castile and Leon. They
wrote them after doing a yearlong survey
of the sky from the city of Toledo, Spain.
This was done at some point between the
years 1263 and 1272; they were to correct
errors that had been found in the Toledan
Tables.
The Alfonsine Tables were the first tables
written for the Christian world. Done in
Spanish, they were the first scientific
work for Western Christians not in Latin
as well; all later editions did use Latin.
After much revision and elaboration at
the University of Paris in the year 1327,
they were the most popular tables in
Europe until 1551. That year Reinhold
published the Prutenic Tables. The
figure for the tropical year in the
‘Parisian Alfonsine Tables’ was off by
only 30 seconds; this was the best
estimate in Christian Europe until 1582.
The Alfonsine Tables
The Almagest: Is the Latinized version
of a portion of al-kitabu-l-mijisti, which
is Arabic for ‘The Great Book’; it has
been known by this title for the last 1400
years. Claudius Ptolemy called it The
Mathematical Syntaxis when he wrote it,
c. AD 150. He was a Greek who lived
in Egypt, which was part of the Roman
Empire at the time. In it, he detailed his
math-based model of the universe; he
said this was centered near the Earth, but
not on it.
The Almagest was the first book to have
astronomical tables done in advance for
common dates and events. It was the
most important work in the astronomy
of the West for more than 1400 years.
Only the efforts of Copernicus, Kepler,
and most of all, Galileo, disproved
Ptolemy’s model.
45
Almanac: Is any book with data on the
positions of the Sun, the Moon, and the
planets; it has other astronomical and
meteorological data as well. They are
published on a regular basis.
Petrus Apianus: (1495-1552) a German
scientist, he was one of the first in the
West to study comets systematically.
Arc minute: Is a unit of measurement in
that is equal to 1/60th
of a degree.
Aristarchus of Samos: This famed
Greek astronomer and mathematician (c.
310-c. 230 BC) was the first man to say
that the Earth and all of the planets orbit
the Sun. His heliocentric model was
ridiculed for most of the next 2000 years.
Aristotle: Was a Greek philosopher
(384-322 BC), his views on science and
philosophy governed much of Western
thought for more than two millennia. His
works are called ‘Aristotelian.’
Armillary sphere: Is a computing and
sighting device that some call a spherical
astrolabe.
A model of one of the types of
armillary sphere used at Hven
It is a three-dimensional model of the
sky that has a spherical ‘Earth’ at its
center; the first one was built c. 255 BC,
in the Greek world. A series of rings
that represent the orbital paths of certain
celestial objects, as well as the planes of
the equator and the meridian, surround
the ‘globe.’ The armillary sphere was
the main tool of astronomy in the Old
World until the telescope.
Astrolabe: This is a sighting and
computing device that consists of a
circular slide rule-planisphere and
engraved data tables that are all nested in
a hollow disk. The first astrolabe dates to
c. 150 BC; some say Hipparchus built it.
They were used to track the motions of
the celestial objects; they could aid with
the calculation of the time of day as well.
The first known universal astrolabe was
built in Muslim Spain, c. 1050.
A portable astrolabe, built c. 1500
Astrology: Is the belief that the positions
of the planets and the stars can influence
life on Earth, especially their positions
when a person is born. From its start in
Sumer and Egypt by the year 2500 BC,
most viewed astrology as a valid science;
it was related to astronomy until the
eighteenth century. Many astronomers
such as Tycho Brahe and Kepler were
46
also astrologers. In this era, very few
would write to condemn astrology.
Astronomical clock: Is a timekeeping
device that provides data on the signs of
the zodiac as well as the positions and
motions of some of the celestial objects.
Most of these clocks show the Sun
circling the Earth, as they predate the
eighteenth century; this was the time of
the triumph of heliocentrism. The first
ones were built in China, c. 980.
Astronomical tables: Are mathematical
tables that are used to aid the calculation
of the positions of the Sun, the Moon, the
planets, and the stars. They have
information on lunar phases and eclipses,
as well as other calendrical data.
Astronomy: Is the scientific study of
objects that are beyond the atmosphere of
the Earth; some call it ‘the first science.’
The Sumerians were the first to elevate
astronomy to a true science, c. 3500 BC.
The Astronomer, Paul Vermeer (1668)
Atmospheric refraction: This is an
optical illusion that is caused by the
bending of light waves. This is due to the
variable density of the atmosphere of the
Earth. This causes objects near the
horizon to appear higher in the sky than
they are. Astronomers correct for this by
viewing items at their highest point; it is
where its effects are less pronounced.
Bavaria: Is the southeastern portion of
Germany. Prior to the rise of Prussia in
the eighteenth century, it was often the
richest and strongest of the German
states. Most of its people are Catholics.
Bhaskara II: (1114-1185) was a Hindu
mathematician, astronomer-astrologer,
and poet. He said that the energy of the
Earth ‘attracts’ all things to it.
Breslau: Known as Wroclaw today, this
city in the west of Poland was founded in
the tenth century by Bohemians; its name
then was Sviatislavia. It was burned in
the Mongol invasion of 1241. The new
town had a large population of German
speakers; they renamed it Breslau. It was
transferred from Germany to Poland after
World War II. Most of its German
population had fled in 1945.
c.: A symbol meaning ‘circa,’ which is
Latin for ‘about’ or ‘around.’ Used when
the exact date of an event is unknown.
Camera obscura: Is the Latin term for
‘veiled chamber’; it is a room or boxlike
object with a small hole at one end.
Light rays reflected from a bright subject,
when they pass through the hole do not
scatter. Instead, they will cross and re-
form; this produces a reverse image of
the subject on a flat surface that is held
parallel to the hole. The camera obscura
was a precursor of the modern camera;
astronomers would use them prior to the
invention of the telescope. In sixteenth
century Europe, they were improved by
placing a convex lens over the hole.
47
The oldest known illustration of a
camera obscura; Gemma Frisius, 1544
Martianus Capella: A Roman author (c.
AD 365-440), he wrote an allegory that
had the earliest known geoheliocentric
model. He said that Venus and Mercury
both orbit the Sun. The Sun and the rest
of the Solar System, he said, circle the
Earth. This is the ‘Capellan’ model.
Celestial globe: This is also known as a
celestial sphere. It is a representation of
the night sky as seen from the Earth.
Celestial mechanics: Is the branch of
astronomy that deals with the motions
and gravitational properties of the
celestial objects. In the period under
discussion, these were limited to the Sun,
the Moon, the stars, and the five planets.
Celestial objects: Before the use of
telescopes, these were the Sun, the
Moon, the stars, and the five visible
planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter,
and Saturn. In this era, most in the West
thought that comets were atmospheric
phenomena.
Charles V: A King of Spain and Holy
Roman Emperor, he lived from the years
1500 to 1558. His reign was the ‘Golden
Age’ of Spain; he was the most powerful
man in the world for most of his life.
Chinese calendars: There has been only
one change in the calendar used in the
Christian world in the last two millennia
but there have been many calendars used
in China in those same years. This is due
to emperors there being seen as receiving
permission to rule through the ‘Mandate
of Heaven.’
As eclipses and other events in the sky
were thought to be threats to Earth’s
existence, many rulers began their reign
with a new calendar. This, it was hoped,
assured that there would be no such signs
of ‘Heaven’s disapproval’ that had not
been predicted. In some cases, these
could lead to the overthrow of the new
sovereign. More often, unforeseen
celestial events resulted in the death of
the court astronomers who had failed to
predict them.
Chinese Islamic calendar: Also known
as the Huihui-li calendar, it is a luni-solar
calendar. It was developed by Chinese
and Muslim astronomers; they worked in
the city of Dadu (Beijing), at the
direction of Kublai Khan (1215-1294). It
was used in China along with other
calendars for three centuries.
College of Rome: Now a part of the
Pontifical Gregorian University, this
school was founded in the year 1551 by
Saint Ignatius of Loyola. He was the
founder of the Society of Jesus (the
Jesuits). Many of the missionaries whom
the Society sent to convert the
populations of Asia, Africa, and the
Americas were trained at the college.
Constellation: Is one of the 88 artificial
groupings of stars and galaxies that are
used around the world; most of them
were first defined by Eudoxus of Cnidus.
Most cultures have their own system of
48
constellations. Other star groups, such as
the ‘Big Dipper’ are called asterisms.
Both constellations and asterisms are
defined by their appearance from Earth.
In reality, the stars of most are far apart
from each other.
Coordinates: These describe the
location of a celestial object, as expressed
by its declination and right ascension.
Nicolaus Copernicus: Was a famed
Polish scientist, administrator, cleric,
and doctor (1473-1543); he revived
theories from ancient Greece that said
that the Earth and the other planets all
orbit the Sun. This was a challenge to
the dominant Ptolemaic astronomy of
his time, as well as to Church doctrine.
A 1580 painting of Copernicus
He laid the foundations of modern
astronomy as well; many credit him with
starting the Scientific Revolution. He
was in many ways a medieval man; he
said that the stars were 74 million miles
from Earth. He wrote that the Sun was
the literal abode of God; it, he said was
at or near the center of the universe.
Cosmography: This science deals with
descriptions of the general features of the
universe. This is done at a level less
detailed than that of astronomy.
Crypto-Calvinism: Was a pejorative
term for the influence of Calvinism in the
Lutheran Church. It was used in the
years soon after the death of Martin
Luther (1483-1546). Those accused of it
were persecuted in much of Protestant
Germany from the years 1552 to 1592.
Crystalline spheres: Was a key part of
the Solar System model that was written
by Eudoxus of Cnidus. He said that the
Sun, the Moon, the stars, and the planets
all orbit the Earth inside of 27 circular,
concentric spheres. After Aristotle,
Callipus, and Ptolemy made changes to it,
this concept was used by most Western
astronomers until 1577.
That year, Tycho Brahe proved that
comets traveled far beyond the Moon; this
meant that they were not atmospheric
phenomena, as Aristotle claimed. If they
had been real, the comet of 1577 could
not travel through the Solar System, as it
would have destroyed, or been impeded
by the spheres.
Declination: Is one of two coordinates
of the equatorial coordinate system,
which is based on measuring celestial
objects from the ecliptic. The other
coordinate is the difference of right
ascension. Declination is synonymous
with latitude when it is projected onto the
celestial sphere. It is used to measure the
vertical coordinate of an object.
Diurnal motion: This is the apparent
motion of the Sun and the stars as viewed
from Earth. It is caused by the rotation of
the Earth.
49
Dogma: Is a system of beliefs that is not
supported by empirical evidence. Early
Christian dogma held the Earth was flat
and at the center of the universe,
contemporary Aristotelian dogma stated
that the universe was finite, unchanging,
and centered on the Earth.
The ecliptic: This is the term for the
path of the Sun, as it appears to move
across the sky over the course of a year.
It is where eclipses occur.
Eighty Year’s War: Also known as the
Dutch War of Independence, this conflict
lasted from the years 1568 to 1648. It
resulted in what is now the Netherlands
gaining its independence from Spain.
Elizabeth I: Was a Queen of England
(1553 to 1603); she brought England
back to Protestantism. Her reign began
its rise to the status of a great power.
Elliptical orbits: Contrary to most
theories of this era, planets move in
ellipses, not in circles or epicycles.
Kepler published the Laws of Planetary
Motion in the years 1609 and 1624; they
state that all planets have elliptical orbits.
Epicycles: Are theoretical smaller
circles in the orbits of some of the
celestial objects as they move inside of
larger circles; these are called deferents.
Hipparchus and Ptolemy used the
concept of epicycles to explain planetary
motions; they said that the speed of each
object in an epicycle varied.
Epicycles were a central part of the
astronomy of the West until Kepler
proved that they did not exist.
Copernicus had to use more epicycles in
his model than Ptolemy had used in his.
They were a central part of the
astronomy of the West until Kepler
proved that they did not exist.
‘Fixed stars’: The Babylonians and
Greeks were the first to distinguish the
‘wandering’ planets from the ‘fixed
stars’ that do not appear to move, other
than from diurnal motion.
Ptolemaic epicycles in Mars’ orbit
Equinox: This biannual event occurs
when the Sun appears to be directly
above the equator. The Vernal (spring)
Equinox occurs every March 20 or 21,
and the Autumnal (fall) Equinox falls on
September 22 or 23. On those days, the
Sun rises due east and sets due west on
the equator; the lengths of the day and
night are equal as well.
Eudoxus of Cnidus: This Greek was the
first known mathematical astronomer; he
lived in the years from 408 to 355 BC.
fl.: The symbol for floruit, which is the
Latin word for ‘flourished.’ It is used
when a person’s period of highest
productivity or influence is known, but
the dates of their birth or death are not.
Ahmad al-Farghani: Was a Persian
astronomer and mathematician; his
known work dates between 830 and 861.
50
Ferdinand II: A Holy Roman Emperor,
he lived from 1571 to 1637. His reign
was one of the heights of Habsburg rule.
Oronce Fine: Was a mathematician and
mapmaker from France (1494-1555).
Flemish: Is a resident of Flanders, an
area of northern Belgium. They are often
referred to as the ‘Belgian Dutch’ as their
dialect, which is also called Flemish is
derived from Dutch. Unlike the Dutch,
most Flemish would remain Catholic.
Forbidden City: Located in the city of
Beijing, it was the official residence of
the imperial family of China in the years
from 1406 to the end of the Empire in
1912. It has been a museum since 1925.
Friesland: A formerly independent land,
Friesland is today divided between the
Netherlands and Germany.
Galileo Galilei: Was a renowned Italian
scientist (1564-1642); Albert Einstein
called him the ‘father of modern science.’
Frontispiece of a 1623 book by Galileo
In January 1610, he used a homemade
telescope to discover the four principal
moons of the planet Jupiter. He said that
this showed that celestial bodies could
orbit objects other than the Earth; he
wrote that it was also proof that
heliocentrism was correct. The pope
forced him to make a public denial of
these views in the year 1633 on threat of
death. Still, Galileo had discredited
geocentrism to most literate Europeans.
Geocentrism, geocentric model: Is the
belief that the Earth is at, or near, the
center of the universe; all of the celestial
objects are seen as orbiting the Earth in
this system. In or around the year AD
150, Ptolemy wrote a geocentric model
that dominated the astronomy of the
West for more than 1400 years; it would
take Copernicus, Kepler, and finally,
Galileo, to refute it. Other geocentric
models had concentric (nested) orbits; in
these, the planets, the stars, the Moon,
and the Sun all orbit Earth in circles.
Kepler’s diagram of the three types of
Solar System models, written in 1604
Geoheliocentrism, geoheliocentric
model: These terms refer to any
astronomical model that says that some,
or all, of the planets circle the Sun except
for the Earth; it is orbits by the Sun, the
Moon, and stars. Tycho Brahe wrote the
best-known model of geoheliocentrism; it
51
is called ‘Tychonic.’ He said that the five
planets orbit the Sun. It, the Moon, and
the stars all circle the Earth.
A Hindu, Nilakantha Somayaji, of the
Kerala School, had written the first math-
based model of this type in 1501. It was
similar to what Tycho wrote decades
later. Many used the Tychonic model as
an alternative to heliocentrism once
Galileo had shown that the Sun orbits the
Earth. Geoheliocentric models were no
longer used in the west of Europe after
the early eighteenth century.
Gnomon: Is the elevated area at the
center of a sundial; it casts the shadow
that designates the time of day. In the
northern hemisphere, they are usually
oriented to point north; gnomons are set
so they are parallel to the rotational axis
of the Earth.
Goa: Is a city on the west coast of India;
it was the first part of the country to be
colonized by Europeans. It was as well
as the last to be liberated from them. The
Portuguese ruled Goa from 1510 to 1961.
Gregorian calendar: Is the solar
calendar used in most of world today. It
was devised in the year 1582 by a team
under the direction of Pope Gregory
XIII. It replaced the Julian calendar,
which was ‘off’ by ten days that year.
Most Catholic countries would adopt it,
but Protestant and Eastern Orthodox
nations did not. Most of their resistance
was on religious issues as well as the
‘loss’ of ten days.
England used the Julian calendar until
the year 1752 and Russia until 1917.
Greece, the last European country to use
it, abandoned it in 1923. In the
Gregorian calendar, years are 365 days
long except for every fourth year; these
are leap years of 366 days. The only
exceptions to this are years that are
divisible by 100 but not by 400; these
are not leap years. Thus 1900 was not a
leap year, but 2000 was.
Habsburg: Was the Imperial dynasty
that ruled Austria, and often the Holy
Roman Empire, from 1273 until 1918.
For much of that time they controlled
large portions of central Europe and Italy.
Hesse: Is a formerly independent state in
central Germany; it was one of the first to
adopt Protestantism.
Heliocentrism, heliocentric model: As
defined by Copernicus, this is the view
that the Earth and the other planets all
orbit the Sun. It, he said was at, or near,
the center of the universe. In the third
century BC, the Greek, Aristarchus of
Samos, had written the first math-based
model that the Earth orbits the Sun; for
the next two millennia, only a few did
not reject it.
Thomas Digges’ diagram of the
heliocentric universe
The view that the Sun orbits the Earth
would dominate astronomy, even after
52
Copernicus’ model was published. He
convinced some of his readers, but most
did not accept his ideas. As refined by
Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and others, the
idea that the Sun is the center of the
Solar System has been a mainstay of
astronomy for the last three centuries.
Hipparchus: Is known as ‘The greatest
Greek Astronomer of Antiquity’; he
worked in the years from 146 to 127 BC.
Holy Roman Empire: For the most part
this was a loose confederation of states in
and around Germany and, at times, Italy;
it lasted from 892 until the year 1806.
The Habsburg dynasty controlled the
Holy Roman Empire from 1508 on.
Isfahan: The third largest city in Iran, it
was one of the richest cities in the world
until an Afghan army sacked it in 1722.
Jacob’s staff: This is a type of sighting
instrument used to measure the altitudes
and diameters of celestial objects. They
can be used to find the heights of
terrestrial objects as well. The Jacob’s
staff is most often known as a cross-staff.
Jaipur: Is a city of more than three
million in the west of India. It was
founded in the year 1727, by Jai Singh II.
James I: Was the King of both Scotland
and England; he lived from 1566 to 1625.
Jesuit: Is a member of the Society of
Jesus, a religious order established by the
pope in 1540. Most were as well versed
in science as they were in theology.
Julian calendar: Is a solar calendar that
was introduced in the year 45 BC. It has
a cycle of three years of 365 days each
and one leap year of 366 days. Due to its
over-estimation of the length of the year,
it had an error of ten days by 1582. That
year, the Gregorian calendar replaced it
in most Catholic lands. With time, all of
the lands of Europe abandoned the Julian
calendar, but only slowly; Russia used it
until the year 1917. The Eastern
Orthodox Church still uses it.
Julius II: This Italian was born Giuliano
Della Rovere in 1443. His papal reign
was from 1503 to his death in 1513. He
was known as the ‘Warrior Pope’ for the
wars that he both began and fought.
Kassel: This is a city in the German
principality of Hesse-Kassel.
Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion:
These consist of two natural laws written
in 1609 and the third in 1619, by Kepler;
the last took him seventeen years of
research to do. These laws were
confirmed in 1687 by Newton. They are:
1) Planets move in ellipses, with the
Sun at one focus.
2) The line connecting the planets to
the Sun sweeps equal areas in
equal times, and
3) The square of a planet's orbital
period is proportional to the cube
of its mean distance from the Sun.
Kepler's Laws (photo credit: Stundel).
53
(1) The orbits are ellipses, with focal
points ƒ1 and ƒ2 for the first planet and ƒ1
and ƒ3 for the second planet. The Sun is
placed in focal point ƒ1. (2) The two
shaded sectors A1 and A2 have the same
surface area and the time for planet 1 to
cover segment A1 is equal to the time to
cover segment A2. (3) The total orbit
times for planet 1 and planet 2 have a
ratio a13/2
: a23/2
.
Kerala School: Was an institution of
higher learning in the Indian city of
Kerala. Its members specialized in math
and astronomy. It was most prosperous
from c. 1400 to c. 1630. The last scholar
there died in the year 1838.
Kesava: Was a Hindu astronomer and
astrologer; his works date from the years
1496 to 1507.
Omar Khayyam: Was a Persian
scientist and poet, he lived from 1048 to
1132. He wrote the Jalali calendar; it
was the best yet, at the time.
Krakow: A city in southern Poland, it
was founded in the tenth century. It was
the capital of Poland from the years 1038
to 1596; it was the center of higher
education in Poland for centuries more.
Ali Kuscu: Was a Turkish scientist who
lived from 1403 to 1474.
Latin: Is an Indo-European language
that was used in the west of Europe from
the fall of Rome until modern times. It is
the origin of Spanish, French, and Italian,
as well as all other ‘Romance
Languages.’ It was no longer in daily use
by the year 900.
Latitude: In astronomy, this is the
angular distance of celestial bodies to the
north or south of the ecliptic. It is also
used to reference north-south distances
on Earth; the equator is at zero degrees
latitude, and both the north and south
poles are at 90° latitude.
Linz: A city in Austria, it was the home
of Johannes Kepler for years.
Longitude: Is a system that is based on
imaginary lines called the lines of
longitude. They run along the north to
south axis of both the Earth and the
celestial sphere. They are used to find
east to west coordinates; Hipparchus
seems to have been the first to use both
longitude and latitude. The prime
meridian, which is the zero point of the
global longitudinal system, has run
through the Greenwich area of London,
England since the year 1884.
Lunar table: Is a mathematical table
that details the motions and positions of
the Moon. They are critical in the
prediction of eclipses.
Luni-solar calendar: Is any calendar
that uses both lunar phases and the Sun’s
position. Most of them have a year of
twelve months and leap years of thirteen
months every two to three years.
Macao: This city in southern China was
a Portuguese colony from 1555 to 1999.
Martin Luther: Famed German monk
(1483-1546); he founded the Lutheran
religion and began the Reformation.
Magnetic poles: The Earth’s magnetic
field is most evident at two points where
the field is vertical to the surface of the
Earth. Compasses point to these spots,
which are called the magnetic poles.
Both poles move over time, due to the
54
dynamic nature of the planet’s magnetic
fields. The northern magnetic pole is at
or near 80 degrees, or more, north. The
southern magnetic pole fluctuates at or
near 60 degrees south.
Mary I: Was a queen of England, she
lived in the years from 1516 to 1558. As
a devout Catholic, she tried in vain to
reverse the move to Protestantism made
by her father, Henry VIII. She is best
known as ‘Bloody Mary’ for the many
martyrs she sent to the stake.
Mathematical astronomy: This is the
application of mathematics to the study
of astronomy; the disciplines were
closely related. Mathematical astronomy
began with the Sumerians, by 2000 BC.
Matthias: Was a Holy Roman Emperor,
he lived from 1557 to 1619; he was a
member of the Habsburg dynasty. The
Thirty Years’ War began in his reign.
Meridian: Is an imaginary circle from
the North Pole to the South Pole. At the
equator, a degree of the meridian is 69
miles in length but at either pole, it is
only a few feet in length.
Mira: A binary star in the constellation
Cetus; it is 418 light-years from Earth. It
was discovered in 1596 by Fabricius.
Mira was thought to have been a nova
until it reappeared in thirteen years. See
‘Periodic Variable Star.’
Model: Is an idea or concept that leads
to the creation of testable explanations
of the phenomena that is being studied.
Motion of the solar apogee: In
geocentric models, the solar apogee is
the furthest position of the Sun from the
Earth. The motion of the solar apogee
over time relative to background stars is
in fact, evidence of the movement of the
Sun and its Solar System through space.
Mughal: Was the Muslim Dynasty that
ruled most of what are now India,
Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh
from the early sixteenth century until the
year 1858. They brought the science and
culture of Persia to India; this is typified
by their best-known creation, the Taj
Mahal. It was built from 1631 to 1648.
Muhammad Shah: This ruler of the
Mughal Empire lived in the years from
1702 to 1748; the realm began to
disintegrate in his reign.
Muslim: As used, this can be anyone or
thing that is associated with the Islamic
religion, which was founded by
Muhammad (c. 570-632).
Nebulae: Is the plural of nebula, which
is a huge amorphous cloud of gas and
dust in intergalactic space.
Isaac Newton: Renowned British
scientist (1643-1725); he is honored as
one of the most important people in the
history of science.
Observatory: This is a facility from
which to watch the sky; they have precise
sighting equipment as well. Many have
research and administrative facilities;
some of the observatories of the era were:
1) William IV’s observatory in
Kassel, Germany, built in 1561,
2) The Istanbul observatory of Taqi
al-Din; it was used from 1577, or
1579, to 1580,
3) Uraniborg, a castle-observatory,
founded in 1576, and Stjerneborg,
which was built in 1584; both of
55
them were on the Danish isle of
Hven. They were used by Tycho
Brahe until 1597,
4) Benátky nad Jizerou; it is the
observatory near the city of
Prague that Rudolph II built for
Tycho Brahe in 1599,
5) The five observatories built by Jai
Singh II in the Indian cities of
Delhi, Jaipur, Ujjain, Benares,
and Mathura, from 1717 to 1727.
Part of the Jaipur Observatory
Occultation: An event caused when an
object temporarily blocks all or part of
the light of a celestial object. Eclipses
and transits are types of occultations.
Orthographic projection: This is a
cartographic technique used to project the
celestial sphere on a plane; it has a
projection point at infinity. In the
orthogonal projection of the Earth, the
meridians are shown with curved lines,
the ecliptic, and the parallels by straight
lines.
Ottoman Empire: Was a Turkish state
that lasted from 1299 to 1923. Centered
on what is now Turkey, it controlled
much of North Africa, the Middle East,
and Southeastern Europe for four
centuries, until World War I. It was a
major power from the fifteenth to the
eighteenth centuries.
P. Cygni: Is a variable star in the
constellation Cygnus that is 5000 to 6000
light years from Earth. It was mistaken
for a nova when it was first observed, in
the years from 1600 to 1626, until it
reappeared from 1665 to 1672. See
‘Periodic Variable Star.’
Patriarch: As used in the text, this is a
leader of one of the Christian churches in
the Middle East.
Periodic variable star: Is a star whose
apparent magnitude, or brightness,
changes in predictable (periodic) patterns.
The periodic variability for light emitted
by a star is often due to changes within
the star or its stellar system. Others are
from a star being eclipsed by another
large object; this is usually seen as
evidence of a binary star system.
Georg von Peurbach: (1423-1461) was
an Austrian astronomer, astrologer, and
mathematician; he played a key role in
the advance of astonomy in Europe.
Phillip II: Was a King of Spain; he
lived from 1527 to 1598. His reign
would be both the height of Spain’s
Empire and the beginning of its decline.
Planetarium: During this era, these
were small representations of the night
sky. They showed only the motions of
the Sun, the Moon, and planets; the
walk-in planetariums of today were not
built until the early nineteenth century.
Planetary longitudes: This refers to the
distance from the first point in the Greek
zodiac, the constellation Aries, to any
56
celestial body. It is measured along the
ecliptic.
Pleiades Cluster: Is a group of seven
stars in the constellation Taurus; its core
is eight light-years from Earth. Under
optimal viewing conditions, eleven stars
are visible. It is one of the star clusters
closest to the Earth. The Pleiades is one
of the brightest star clusters as well.
Precession of the equinoxes: Also
called Precession, it is the term for the
changes in the positions of the stars. It
is caused by the 25,765-year cycle of
Earth's axis of rotation with respect to
inertial space i.e. the Earth’s ‘wobble.’
It is due to the gravitational effects of
the Sun and the Moon. Hipparchus was
the first man to identify this westward
movement of the equinoxes along the
ecliptic through time. He did this by
comparing his maps of the positions of
certain stars for more than two decades
with those made centuries earlier by
Greek and Babylonian astronomers.
He found that the tropical year was
twenty minutes shorter than the sidereal
year; he said that this was due to what
Copernicus would call precession. One
of its consequences is the changing Pole
(North) Star. This was the star Thuban
in the year 3000 BC; it is now the star
Polaris. The star Vega will be the Pole
Star in 12,000 years. See ‘Sidereal
year,’ and ‘Tropical year.’
Prutenic Tables: Were astronomical
tables written by Erasmus Reinhold in
1551; they were based on data gathered
by Copernicus. They were named for the
Prussian (Prutenic) Duke who sponsored
Reinhold. They replaced the Alfonsine
Tables as the most widely used tables in
Europe; they were only marginally better.
The Rudolphine Tables would supplant
the Prutenic Tables after 1627.
Ptolemaic: Is anything that is
associated with the model written c. AD
150; the author was a Greek, Ptolemy.
He believed in a geocentric universe that
was less than 145 million miles across.
He said that the Earth was near, but not
at, its center; he said the motions of the
Sun, the Moon, and the planets were due
to concepts such as deferents and
epicycles.
The Ptolemaic universe
Quadrant: Is a sighting instrument in
the form of a graduated quarter of a
circle (90°); they are used to measure the
altitude of celestial objects above the
horizon. Ptolemy built the first
quadrant; he said that he wanted an
alternative to the complex astrolabe.
Astrolabic quadrants were tools that
contained no moving parts. They were
used to determine time by the altitude of
the Sun.
Copernicus, Columbus and many others
in this era used this type of quadrant.
Astrolabic quadrants were popular into
the twentieth century in the Ottoman
Empire. Mural quadrants were set up on
57
a wall; they were used to measure the
altitude of celestial objects.
Regiomontanus: A German astronomer
and mathematician, he was the greatest of
his times. He lived from 1436 to 1476;
his birth name was Johann Muller.
Right ascension: Is one of the two
coordinate points used to locate objects in
the sky; the other is declination. Right
ascension is equivalent to longitude.
Roman Inquisition: Is an institution of
the Catholic Church that was established
by Pope Sixtus V in 1588. It was
charged with prosecution of Protestants
but it soon expanded to deal with those
accused of witchcraft and other charges.
It remained active, primarily in Italy,
until the year 1870. Inquisitors could use
physical means, i.e. torture, to force
obedience to religious law.
Rudolph II: Was a Holy Roman
Emperor, he lived from 1552 to 1612.
A 1592 portrait of Rudolph II
He was a patron of the arts and sciences;
he was a strong believer in the occult as
well. He was for the most part tolerant of
Protestants. He was deposed, for all of
those reasons and more, by his younger
brother, Matthias. Rudolph died in nine
months; six years later, the Thirty Years’
War began. It claimed the lives of at
least eight million people. The war all
but destroyed the Holy Roman Empire.
Rudolphine Tables: Are astronomical
tables that were written by Kepler in
1624 and published three years later.
They were based on data gathered by
Kepler’s former employer, Tycho Brahe.
They were the most accurate tables in the
world at the time. They were the first to
show calculations of planetary positions
for any date in the past or future.
The Rudolphine Tables were an advance
over earlier tables in that they were the
first to account in full for atmospheric
refraction. They were also the first to be
based on the model of heliocentrism.
Kepler named them after the Habsburg
Emperor Rudolph II (1555-1612); he was
a patron of both Tycho and Kepler.
The cover of the Rudolphine Tables
Johannes de Sacrobosco: (fl. 1232-c.
1250) English (?) astronomer-astrologer;
he wrote two of the most widely read
books on astronomy of his era.
58
Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre:
Was a persecution of French Protestants
that was carried out by elements of the
Catholic government in 1572. The
violence went on for weeks in much of
the country; it is thought that some 5000
to 30,000 people were murdered. More
than that would flee to lands ruled by
Protestants in both America and Europe;
this was a serious blow to the middle
class of the country.
Sanskrit: Is a language that is used
today primarily in Hindu religious
ceremonies. It has been used since
before the year 1500 BC; it was spoken
by the Indo-European Aryans who
invaded India from Central Asia at that
time. For centuries, Sanskrit was the
language of scholars in India, as Latin
was in Europe.
Early nineteenth century Sanskrit text
Saxony: Is a formerly independent state
in the east of Germany. It was usually
one of the more powerful principalities in
the Holy Roman Empire. It was the first
major state in the world to adopt
Protestantism as its religion.
Johannes Schoner: (1477-1547) was a
German mathematician and astronomer.
Seleucus of Seleucia: Was a Greco-
Babylonian astronomer who lived c. 150
BC. He was the only scholar of his era
who supported Aristarchus of Samos’
model that the Earth orbits the Sun.
Selim II: Was a Sultan of the Ottoman
Empire, he lived from 1524 to 1574. The
decline of the Empire is usually seen as
beginning in his reign.
Sidereal year: Is how long the Sun
takes to return to its original position
with respect to the background stars as
viewed from the Earth; this is the
apparent orbital period of the Earth, or
365.256 days. Due to precession, this is
twenty minutes and twenty-four seconds
more than the tropical year. The tropical
year is the time it takes the Earth to orbit
the Sun, or 365.2422 days. See
‘Tropical year.’
Silesia: Is a geographical area now
encompassed by portions of southeastern
Germany and southwestern Poland. In
the sixteenth century, its population was
a mixture of Germans and Slavs.
Solar eccentricity: What is actually the
Earth’s eccentric orbit of the Sun is, in
geocentric models, seen as the Sun’s non-
uniform orbit. The fact that the annual
motion of the solar apogee differed from
precession was seen as evidence of the
Sun’s eccentric orbit.
Solar eclipse: An event that is caused
by the new moon passing between the
Earth and the Sun; this casts the lunar
shadow on a portion of the Earth.
Nilakantha Somayaji: A Hindu
astronomer and mathematician (1444-
1544), he wrote the first math-based
geoheliocentric model. He said that all of
the planets orbit the Sun, it, and the rest
of the universe circle the Earth. This is
59
usually known as a ‘Tychonic’ model; his
work was superior to the Dane’s model,
as Somayaji said that the Earth rotated.
He wrote that orbits were elliptical; this
was also more accurate than what Tycho
would write.
Star atlas: Is a book of maps or charts
showing the locations of stars and
constellations.
Star catalog: Is a systematic listing of
stars, usually with their locations and
other data. Babylonian astronomers
wrote the first star catalogs, c. 1200 BC.
Star chart: Is a map of all, or a portion
of, the night sky as seen from Earth.
Sundial: Is the oldest and simplest
time-keeping device; they are formed by
using a gnomon in a circle that is used to
represent the day. A gnomon is the
object in the center of the circle that
casts a shadow. The earliest known
sundials are from Egypt, c. 3500 BC.
Sunspot: Is an intensely magnetic area
on the visible face of the Sun. They are
caused by magnetic storms that reveal the
cooler, lower layers of the Sun; these are
darker in color. During periods of
extreme sunspot activity, they can be
seen from Earth with the naked eye.
Supernova: Is an event that is caused
by a large star burning up its fuel; this
leads to the star collapsing, and finally,
exploding, from released gravitational
energy. This burst of radiation is
temporarily visible in the night sky and
sometimes during the day as well. They
can be visible to the naked eye from a
few days to many months. Tycho Brahe
and others said that the supernova of
1572 proved that the heavens were not
‘perfect and unchanging,’ as both
Aristotle and Ptolemy had written.
Supernova 1987A: Before (right) and
after (left) (photo credit: NASA)
Tables: See ‘Astronomical tables.’
Thirty Years’ War: Fought from 1618
to 1648, this was the most destructive
conflict in Western Europe before World
War I. It is estimated that at least eight
million people were killed; most of these
were civilians. Most of these deaths were
from disease and famine, not battle.
Western Europe in 1648
Almost all of the war was fought in or
near Germany; populations there declined
60
by fifty percent. The main results of the
war were the decline of both Spain and
the Holy Roman Empire as well as the
rise of France. The war furthered the
division of Europe along religious lines.
Transit: Is the passage of a smaller
celestial object, such as the Moon or a
planet, between the Earth and a more
distant, larger object such as the Sun.
Trepidation: This was a theoretical
oscillation or irregularity in the timing of
equinoxes; it was used as an alternative
to the theory of precession. It was a key
concept in Western astronomy for more
than a thousand years.
Trigonometry: Is the branch of math
that involves triangles, especially plane
triangles. Ancient Egyptians and
Babylonians laid its foundations, but it
was the Greek, Hipparchus who wrote
the first trigonometric tables, c. 130 BC.
Trigonometric tables: These tables
were used to look up logarithms and for
other mathematical tasks. They were
employed in navigation and engineering
as well as in the conduct of scientific
research.
Tropical year: Also called a solar year;
in heliocentric systems, it is the length
of time needed for the Earth to complete
its orbit of the Sun. In geocentric
models, it is the time it takes for the Sun
to return to the same position along the
path of the ecliptic. The mean tropical
year is 365.2422 days long. See the
‘Ecliptic,’ and ‘Sidereal Year.’
Nasir al-Din Al-Tusi: Was a Persian
scientist and theologian who lived from
1201 to 1274. He was the first man to
prove that the Earth rotated.
Tychonic: Is anything that is associated
with the geoheliocentric model written by
Tycho Brahe in the year 1588. It would
be the most popular theory of its kind.
Ulugh Beg: This Turkish-speaking
astronomer and king lived in Central Asia
in the years from 1393 to 1449. He wrote
the best star catalog yet made at that time.
Variable star: These are stars whose
brightness varies in non-predictable
ways; see “Periodic Variable Star.”
‘Western’: In the text, this refers to the
populations and cultures of Central Asia,
the Middle East, North Africa, and
Europe. Thus, ‘Eastern’ groups, or
cultures are those from the Indian
subcontinent, China, Korea, and Japan.
Zodiac: Is the term for the band of the
sky eight degrees that is centered on the
ecliptic; it means ‘Circle of Animals’ in
ancient Greek. It is the path of the Sun
through the orbits of the five visible
planets and the Moon. In astrology, the
‘band of the zodiac’ is divided into
twelve equal parts each 30° wide. Each
of these is named for a constellation;
these are the signs of the zodiac.
The zodiac and its constellations
61
PERIOD ASTRONOMERS IN POPULAR CULTURE
As might be expected in a period
dominated by the culture and science of
Western Europe, all but one of those
from this era of astronomy who have
entered modern culture is from there.
The exception is Jai Singh; he was a
Hindu prince of the eighteenth century.
Giordano Bruno, an Italian priest, is one
of these Europeans; he was burned at the
stake in the year 1600. He has often been
seen as a martyr for science; this is due to
his visionary ideas. He not only said that
the Earth orbits the Sun, he wrote that the
stars were other suns that were circled by
other Earths. He said that life on those
planets was as advanced as that here. He
was well known for these theories.
Statue of Giordano Bruno in Rome
None of these ideas was the cause of his
death; the Church did not outlaw any of
them until the year 1616. They burned
him alive for ‘theological errors’; these
are still unknown as the Inquisition lost
his file. In the plaza in Rome where he
died is a statue of him. There is a more
abstract statue in his honor in Berlin,
Germany. Giordanobruno.com is a
website that is dedicated to his memory.
Another of this era in science
remembered today is the Italian Jesuit
missionary, Matteo Ricci. Like Bruno,
he was a persuasive supporter of
Copernicus’ model of heliocentrism. He
is honored in both Italy and China; he
was the first Western Christian to win
many converts in that land. There are
colleges and institutes named for him in
Hong Kong and Macao in China, and in
Taipei, Taiwan; there are two more in the
United States, in San Francisco and
Seattle. A move to have him made a
saint of the Catholic Church began in the
year 1984; it was renewed in 2010.
Matteo Ricci’s tomb in Beijing, China
Many in India still honor Jai Singh
(1688-1743); he was one of the last in
astronomy who did not depend on the
telescope. He is better known today as
the founder of the city of Jaipur, India.
He built massive open-air observatories
there as well as in four other cities. This
was part of an effort by him to modernize
science in India; four of the five still
exist. All are tourist attractions; the ones
in Jaipur and Delhi can still be used.
There is a museum to Jai Singh in Jaipur.
62
The two of this era that are remembered
the most are Tycho Brahe and Johannes
Kepler. Tycho was a Danish nobleman;
he is still famous for his artificial nose.
He had lost most of the original in a duel
that had been fought over math. Many
sources say that the prosthetic was made
of gold or silver, but he most likely
usually wore one of copper, as it would
have been lighter.
Many remember his parties; his
clairvoyant ‘little person’ Jepp, as well as
his pet elk (or moose) are still celebrated.
Some in the Czech Republic, his adopted
home, still refer to his terrible death; as
they leave for the restroom, some say,
“Pardon me, I don’t want to end up like
Tycho Brahe.” The website
Tychobrahe.com honors his life.
Tycho Brahe’s tomb in Prague
His grave was exhumed in 1901 and
2010; the samples taken then have
identified mercury poisoning as the most
likely cause of the Dane’s death. Works
of both fiction and nonfiction have
suggested that he was murdered.
Suspects range from Kepler, Tycho’s
assistant, to a cousin who supposedly
killed him for the King of Denmark. A
planetarium in Copenhagen honors
Tycho; a spacecraft that a private firm in
Denmark is building is also named for
him. Stjerneborg, an observatory he built
on the Danish isle of Hven, was
excavated in the 1950s; it has been
restored and is open to visitors. The
second, larger observatory there,
Uraniborg, is also being restored.
The idea that Johannes Kepler killed
Tycho is spurned by most; he is one of
the most revered men in science. Some
call him the ‘Central figure of the
Scientific Revolution.’ Kepler is honored
across the world, and beyond. In 2009,
NASA launched a space telescope named
for him; in 2011, the European Space
Agency named a space vehicle for him.
A mountain range in New Zealand bears
his name, as do to two operas. In Linz,
Austria, which was his home for years, is
a university named in his honor; a college
in Seattle, Washington also bears his
name. Johanneskepler.com is a website
to his memory. The town of Weil der
Stadt, Germany, his birthplace, calls
itself, ‘The Kepler Town.’ The Episcopal
Church of the United States honors both
Kepler and Copernicus with a feast day
on May 23.
Statue in Prague of Tycho and Kepler
63
ASTRONOMICAL FEATURES AND SPACECRAFT NAMED FOR PERIOD
ASTRONOMERS
Johann Bayer: Lunar crater Bayer.
Tycho Brahe: Lunar crater Tycho,
Martian crater Tycho, asteroid 1677
Tycho Brahe, asteroid 1678 Hven, and
HEAT 1X Tycho Brahe (the first attempt
to launch a private manned spacecraft).
Giordano Bruno: Lunar crater Bruno,
and asteroid 5148 Giordano.
Joost Burgi: Lunar crater Bergius, and
asteroid 2481 Burgi.
Christopher Clavius: Lunar crater
Clavius.
Peter Cruger: Lunar crater Cruger.
David Fabricius: Lunar crater Fabricius.
Gemma Frisius: Lunar crater Frisius.
William Gilbert: Lunar crater Gilbert; it
also named for Grove Karl Gilbert (1843-
1918).
Paul Hainzel: Lunar crater Hainzel.
Tadeas Hajek: Lunar crater Hagecius,
and asteroid 1995 Hajek.
Johannes Kepler: Lunar crater Kepler,
Martian crater Kepler, asteroid 1134
Kepler, asteroid 3258 Somnium, Kepler
Space Telescope, which NASA launched
in 2009; and ‘Kepler automatic transfer
vehicle’ of the European Space Agency.
Pieter Keyser: Asteroid Pietkeyser
10655.
Philippus Lansbergen: Lunar crater
Lansberg.
Aloysius Lilius: Lunar crater Lilius, and
asteroid 2346 Lilio.
Longomontanus: Lunar crater
Longomontanus.
Michael Maestlin: Lunar crater
Maestlin, lunar feature Rimae Maestlin,
and asteroid 11771 Maestlin.
Giovanni Magini: Lunar crater
Maginus.
Simon Marius: Lunar crater Marius,
lunar feature Rima Marius, and Marius
Regio, part of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede.
Metius: Lunar crater Metius.
Pedro Nunes: Lunar crater Nonius.
Alessandro Piccolomini: Lunar crater
Piccolomini.
Pietro Pitati: Lunar crater Pitatus.
Nicolaus Reimers: Lunar crater
Reimarus.
Erasmus Reinhold: Lunar crater
Reinhold.
Georg Rheticus: Lunar crater Rhaeticus,
and asteroid 15949 Rhaeticus.
Matteo Ricci: Lunar crater Riccius.
Christoph Rothmann: Lunar crater
Rothmann.
Daniel Santbech: Lunar crater
Santbech.
64
Gellio Sasceride: Lunar crater
Sasserides.
Johannes Stadius: Lunar crater Stadius.
William IV of Hesse-Kassel: Lunar
crater Wilhelm.
The Moon in eclipse; Tycho crater is on the lower left.
The Kepler Space Orbital Observatory; it was launched in 2009.
65
Selected Bibliography
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New York, Free Press, 2001. Print
“CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA” NEW ADVENT: Home. Web. 2011.
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Encyclopædia Britannica (Eleventh ed). Cambridge University Press,
1911. Web. 2011.
Christianson, J. R. On Tycho's Island: Tycho Brahe and His Assistants, 1570-1601.
Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge UP, 2000. Print.
“Clock Time-Line.” Antiquarian Horological Society. Web. 2010.
Day, Lance, and Ian McNeil. Biographical Dictionary of the History of Technology.
London: Routledge, 1996. Print.
Encyclopædia of Islam, Second Edition. Edited by P. J. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E.
Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs et al., Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960–2005.
Print.
Encyclopedia Britannica Online Encyclopedia. Web. 2011.
Evans, James. The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy. Oxford University Press.
1998. Print.
Gillispie, Charles Coulston. Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Detroit:
Scribner, 2008. Print.
Gingerich, Owen. The Eye of Heaven: Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler. New York, NY:
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