6 stories from this place.
Tycho Brahe wore a metal prosthetic nose for the entire adult portion of his life after losing the original to a student duel in 1566. The Renaissance prosthetics tradition that produced his nose was a substantial European craft specialism that survived from the 15th to the 19th century before being substantively replaced by 20th-century plastic surgery.
Read the story →The mural quadrant at Tycho Brahe's Uraniborg observatory was a brass arc mounted on a north-south wall and used for measuring the meridian altitudes of stars and planets. It was the largest and most accurate astronomical instrument of the pre-telescopic period and produced most of the data that Kepler would later use to derive the laws of planetary motion.
Read the story →On the evening of 11 November 1572 a bright new star appeared in the constellation Cassiopeia. It was visible for sixteen months. Tycho Brahe — twenty-five at the time — measured it carefully enough to prove it sat above the Moon. The Aristotelian heavens that were supposed to be unchanging had quietly changed.
Read the story →Uraniborg was the most expensive scientific instrument in 16th-century Europe — an island observatory built for Tycho Brahe at royal expense. He worked there for 20 years, made the most accurate pre-telescope astronomical observations ever, then fled in 1597. The Crown demolished it the next year.
Read the story →In November 1577 a comet appeared over Europe so bright it cast shadows. A twenty-eight-year-old Dane measured its distance and demolished Aristotle's heavens.
Read the story →Tycho Brahe died because nobody told him he could leave the dinner table. Four centuries later they dug him up to find out for sure.
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