Hipparchus of Nicaea was a Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician. He is considered the founder of trigonometry, but is most famous for his incidental discovery of precession of the equinoxes. Hipparchus was born in Nicaea, Bithynia, and probably died on the island of Rhodes, Greece. He is known to have been a working astronomer between 162 and 127 BC.
Johannes Kepler was a German astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, natural philosopher and writer on music. He is a key figure in the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, best known for his laws of planetary motion, and his books Astronomia nova, Harmonice Mundi, and Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae. These works also provided one of the foundations for Newton's theory of universal gravitation.
Tycho Brahe was a Danish astronomer, known for his accurate and comprehensive astronomical observations. Born in Scania, which became part of Sweden in the next century, Tycho was well known in his lifetime as an astronomer, astrologer, and alchemist. His has been described as "the first competent mind in modern astronomy to feel ardently the passion for exact empirical facts". Most of his observations were more accurate than the best observations available at the time.
SN 1604, also known as Kepler's Supernova, Kepler's Nova or Kepler's Star, was a Type Ia supernova that occurred in the Milky Way, in the constellation Ophiuchus. Appearing in 1604, it is the most recent supernova in our galaxy to have been unquestionably observed by the naked eye, occurring no farther than 6 kiloparsecs from Earth. Before the adoption of the current naming system for supernovae, it was named for Johannes Kepler, the German astronomer who described it in De Stella Nova.
Tycho is a prominent lunar impact crater located in the southern lunar highlands, named after the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546–1601). It is estimated to be 108 million years old.
Christen Sørensen Longomontanus was a Danish astronomer.
The year 1573 in science and technology included many events, some of which are listed here.
SN 1572, or B Cassiopeiae, was a supernova of Type Ia in the constellation Cassiopeia, one of eight supernovae visible to the naked eye in historical records. It appeared in early November 1572 and was independently discovered by many individuals.
Lunar theory attempts to account for the motions of the Moon. There are many small variations in the Moon's motion, and many attempts have been made to account for them. After centuries of being problematic, lunar motion is now modeled to a very high degree of accuracy.
Michael Maestlin was a German astronomer and mathematician, known for being the mentor of Johannes Kepler. He was a student of Philipp Apian and was known as the teacher who most influenced Kepler. Maestlin was considered to be one of the most significant astronomers between the time of Copernicus and Kepler.
The Copernican Revolution was the paradigm shift from the Ptolemaic model of the heavens, which described the cosmos as having Earth stationary at the center of the universe, to the heliocentric model with the Sun at the center of the Solar System. In 1593 the Copernician Revolution began. This revolution consisted of two phases; the first being extremely mathematical in nature and the second phase starting in 1610 with the publication of a pamphlet by Galileo. Beginning with the publication of Nicolaus Copernicus’s De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, contributions to the “revolution” continued until finally ending with Isaac Newton’s work over a century later.
The Rudolphine Tables consist of a star catalogue and planetary tables published by Johannes Kepler in 1627, using observational data collected by Tycho Brahe (1546–1601). The tables are named in memory of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, in whose employ Brahe and Kepler had begun work on the tables. The main purpose of the Rudolphine tables was to allow the computation of the positions of the then known planets of the Solar System, and they were considerably more precise than earlier such tables.
In astronomy, the variation of the Moon is one of the principal perturbations in the motion of the Moon.
Sophia or Sophie Brahe or after marriage Sophie Thott Lange, was a Danish noble woman and horticulturalist with knowledge of astronomy, chemistry, and medicine. She worked alongside her brother Tycho Brahe in making astronomical observations.
Otte Brahe was a Danish (Scanian) nobleman and statesman, who served on the privy council. He was married to Beate Clausdatter Bille and was the father of astronomers Tycho and Sophia Brahe.
The year 1599 in science and technology involved some significant events.
The Great Comet of 1577 is a non-periodic comet that passed close to Earth during the year 1577 AD. Having an official designation beginning with "C" classes it as a non-periodic comet, and so it is not expected to return. In 1577, the comet was visible to all of Europe, and was recorded by many contemporaries of the time, including the famous Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe and Turkish astronomer Taqi ad-Din. From his observations of the comet, Brahe was able to discover that comets and similar objects travel above the Earth's atmosphere. The best fit using JPL Horizons suggests that the comet is currently about 320 AU from the Sun.
CorneliusGemma was a physician, astronomer and astrologer, and the oldest son of cartographer and instrument-maker Gemma Frisius. He was a professor of medicine at Catholic University of Leuven, and shared in his father's efforts to restore ancient Ptolemaic practice to astrology, drawing on the Tetrabiblos.
De Stella Nova in Pede Serpentarii, generally known as De Stella Nova was a book written by Johannes Kepler between 1605 and 1606, when the book was published in Prague.
A total solar eclipse occurred on August 21, 1560. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partly obscuring the image of the Sun for a viewer on Earth. A total solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is larger than the Sun's, blocking all direct sunlight, turning day into darkness. Totality occurs in a narrow path across Earth's surface, with the partial solar eclipse visible over a surrounding region thousands of kilometers wide.
The moon passed west to east through the center of the earth's umbral shadow causing a very dark red eclipse
Diagram of the appearance of the eclipse from Tycho Brahe's De nova stella
Diagram of the solar system at the time of the eclipse from Tycho Brahe's De nova stella
