Tycho Brahe

On December 14, 1546, Otto and Beattle Brahe gave birth to a son they named Tycho in Denmark. (What is now Sweden). Tycho was the oldest of any of the children Otto and Beattle had. He was born into a very wealth family, both being in high nobility of Denmark. However, he was not raised by his parents; instead he was raised by his paternal uncle, Jorgen Brahe.

When Tycho was older, he attended many different universities. He attended Copenhagen and Leipzig University before he went to Germany and studied at the universities of Wittenberg, Rostock, and Basel. While he attended these different universities, he began to develop a strong interest in alchemy and astronomy and brought along many instruments used in astronomy.

On the 10th of December in 1566 Tycho went to Lucas Bacmeisters, who was a student of his, but he went there in connection to a wedding. Another man was at Bacmeisters house and Tycho Brahe and this man Manderup Parsberg got into and argument. They ended up starting the argument again nineteen days later they had a duel. Manderup had cut off the tip of Tycho Brahe’s nose. Tycho Brahe didn’t make a nose out of wax but an alloy of gold and silver. He put it on so well that nobody could tell it was fake because it looked so real. His friend Wilhelm Janszoon Blaeu said that he used to carry around a box with paste or glue to keep his nose on.

In 1572 Tycho was studying a new star in the constellation Cassiopeia and a year later he published a small tract about it. In 1574 he gave a course of lectures on astronomy at the University of Copenhagen. By this time Tycho was convinced that the future of studies and observations in astronomy would depend on accurate observations of the sky and in having very accurate instruments to use. After he went through Germany again, he accepted an offer by King Fredrick the 2nd to fund an observatory. He was given a little island of Hven in the Sont near Copenhagen. Here he built an observatory and called it Uraniburg. This observatory became the finest observatory in all of Europe.

While Tycho Brahe had studied in Germany for a while he became good friends with Lantgrave Wilhelm. In 1591 he wrote a letter to Tycho and asked him if he knew of an animal that was faster than a deer but with smaller antlers. Tycho had a tame moose that would follow him around like a dog. He said he would send his tame moose to his friend Lantgrave Wilhelm in Germany in exchange for a riding horse. Before he could send him the moose it was at the castle of Landskrona where the moose had drunken beer and had fallen down the stairs to break it leg. The moose