The renaissance, Tycho Brahe and the Quadrant

When the reformation ended in the 15th century in Denmark the renaissance began.

    During the reformation in Denmark the Catholic Church owned most of the land, but that all

changed when King Frederik II and the nobility took over.

The historical time period was a reincarnation of the Antique world. Our ancestors went back

in time and used ancient knowledge to create a more modern world with focus on

individualism instead of God.   

    King Frederik II chose to spend a lot of money on the advancement of science.

    The people became more intelligent and interested in exploring the universe. The world

picture as they knew it, began to be questioned, especially by one man, Tycho Brahe.

    He was one of Frederik’s closest friends, and his discoveries helped shape modern science.

Tycho came from a noble family, and was fluent in Latin at the age of 12, where he also started

studying law at Copenhagen University. After experiencing a solar eclipse, Tycho became very

interested in astronomy. Tycho Brahe did not listen to his parents though, and chose to devote

his life to study the stars. But after spending a lot of time reading astronomy books and

looking at the sky, he discovered that a lot of the things written by earlier astronomers were

imprecise, or even wrong, and that he could only trust his own observations.

    Tycho Brahe decided to dedicate his life to improve and renew astronomy. To do these

things, he created a string of new inventions to measure the stars in the sky and to calculate

their appearance in the future.

    When he was 19 years old he got into an argument with a fellow nobleman, Manderup

Parsberg, about who the best mathematician was. Since they could not come to an agreement,

they had a duel. Unluckily for Tycho Brahe, he got his nose chopped off during the fight, and

had a replacement nose made for him, out of silver.

    He studied alchemy and astrology until he was 22 years old, where he moved to Augsburg,

Germany, and worked for the mayor. Here Tycho invented a quadrant to measure the

positions of the stars in the sky.

    In 1572 he discovered the, for him, biggest wonder in the world since the creation of life: He

saw with his own eyes a new star being “born” in the Cassiopeia constellation. Back then, they

were sure that God had created the world in six days, but now they could see that a new star

was born, and that the world was changeable, which was strongly in contrast to what they had

always believed.

Brahe wrote a book, “De nova stella”, about the new star, and became famous in Europe. At

this point he was only 26 years old.

    Frederik the II offered Tycho Brahe his own island to observe the stars on, Ven, which is

located in Øresund, between Denmark and Sweden. Tycho accepted, and in 1576 he started

building his own stargazing castle, Uranienborg. After it was finished, Tycho found out that

the castle was not so great for stargazing, so he built an underground crypt, Stjerneborg,

where the things he invented would be stable and dry. He observed from Ven for 20 years,

during which he developed instruments, conducted extensive observations and calculation

programs, and showed his work in the form of scientific publications.

Tycho Brahe’s inventions included a celestial globe, upon which all the stars that he could see

were depicted. Sadly it burned in a fire many years later.

    King Christian IV took over when Frederik II died in 1588. Tycho Brahe had been given

around 2% of Denmark’s income, both for research, but also to take care of the people of Ven

and other obligations. Brahe neglected to do this, though, and since Christian IV did not like

him, he stopped giving Tycho Brahe money. Tycho was not very happy about this, and moved

to Prague, where he met his scientific successor, Johannes Kepler from Germany.

Here he lived the last years of his life, finishing astronomical charts and preparing for his final

book, Astronomia insta-ura-tæ mechanica, which was published after his death. People are

suspicious as to whether Brahe died of natural reasons, or if he was poisoned by someone,

possibly Kepler, as Brahe had kept a lot of his observations secret, and many people wanted to

use them for their own work.

Brahe was one of the first astronomers to use his theories in practice. Most of the other

scientists only used theory.

    Brahe’s instruments were still in use for high performance research even after his death.

Through his tireless stargazing on Ven through twenty years, he created an entirely new basis

for astronomy. Kepler later based his three laws on Brahe’s

observations, which helped Newton in discovering the law of gravity.

The Augsburg quadrant was Tycho Brahe’s largest and most precise

invention. The large quadrant was build to make measurements of the starry sky. It was built

with oak and iron. The quadrant had a radius of 5,43 m. Because of its size it was put 8-9

meters underground, and was close to 10 meters above ground. The quadrant needed

multiple people to control it.

At the time, the Augsburgs quadrant was the most precise instrument used to measure the

stars. Unfortunately, a storm broke the quadrant, and Brahe never rebuilt it because of its

large size.

When Brahe died, his successors inherited his sketches and theories. The most notable one

was Johannes Kepler.

Since the quadrant was so unstable and impractical, Brahe created a ring sphere. The ring

sphere was able to directly measure the coordinate differences in the system we still use, the

Equator system. It looks like the Ecliptic only celestial equator chosen as the basic great circle.

Brahe’s inventions was not only the best you could get in his time, but also today, as we

continue to use his ideas, and a few of his inventions, in astrology.

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