Uraniborg, Tycho Brahe's island

Name: Uraniborg, Tycho Brahe's island
Start: 1576
Location: Island of Hven

1576 · Island of Hven · Europe · Science

A king gives an astronomer an entire island to observe from

Uraniborg, Tycho Brahe's island — Stanlekub · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

King Frederick II of Denmark granted Tycho Brahe the island of Hven, where he built a castle-observatory with its own printing press and paper mill. Without a telescope, he gathered the most precise observations of his age, which Kepler used to find his laws of planetary motion.

State: Denmark-Norway

Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 16th century

Did you know

The great astronomer Tycho Brahe wore a metal nose. He lost part of his own in a 1566 duel with a kinsman, reportedly after a quarrel over mathematics. Tests on his remains suggest the prosthesis was brass, not the gold or silver of legend. Share →

Tycho Brahe kept a tame elk that, so the story goes, was killed by beer. Taken to a banquet at another nobleman's castle, the animal drank too much, fell down the stairs and died. Share →

The most accurate pre-telescope sky survey came from a man who never looked through a telescope. Tycho Brahe died in 1601, eight years before Galileo turned one skywards, yet his data let Kepler find the laws of planetary motion. Share →

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