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.
The events
- Uraniborg, Tycho Brahe's island1576 · Island of Hven. 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.
- Galileo's telescopic discoveries1610 · Venice. In The Starry Messenger, Galileo Galilei described mountains on the Moon, countless new stars and four moons of Jupiter seen through his telescope. The observations became powerful evidence for the Copernican system.
More amazing facts
- 1600 · 1601 Some scientists think the 1600 eruption of Peru's Huaynaputina caused the cooling behind Russia's Great Famine of 1601–1603, which helped spark the Time of Troubles.
- 1600 · 1826 Janissary officers had kitchen titles: a company commander was the çorbacı, the "soup server". The cauldron was sacred to the corps, and overturning it signalled revolt.
- 1600 The last months of 1600 shaped two island nations: in October the Battle of Sekigahara opened the way to 265 years of Tokugawa rule in Japan, and on 31 December Elizabeth I chartered the East India Company.
- 1600 Ninja did not wear black suits.
- 1602 In 1602 an Italian drew a world map for the Chinese — and moved the Pacific to the middle.
- 1602 · 1619 The Dutch East India Company issued the first shares ever traded on a stock exchange in 1602.