A Short History of Astronomy, Arthur Berry [large screen ebook reader .TXT] 📗

also moved there towards the end of 1600, and they then worked together harmoniously for the short remainder of Tycho’s life. Though he was by no means an old man, there were some indications that his health was failing, and towards the end of 1601 he was suddenly seized with an illness which terminated fatally after a few days (November 24th). It is characteristic of his devotion to the great work of his life that in the delirium which preceded his death he cried out again and again his hope that his life might not prove to have been fruitless (Ne frustra vixisse videar).

109. Partly owing to difficulties between Kepler and one of Tycho’s family, partly owing to growing political disturbances, scarcely any use was made of Tycho’s instruments after his death, and most of them perished during the Civil Wars in Bohemia. Kepler obtained possession of his observations; but they have never been published except in an imperfect form.

110. Anything like a satisfactory account of Tycho’s services to astronomy would necessarily deal largely with technical details of methods of observing, which would be out of place here. It may, however, be worth while to attempt to give some general account of his characteristics as an observer before referring to special discoveries.

Tycho realised more fully than any of his predecessors the importance of obtaining observations which should not only be as accurate as possible, but should be taken so often as to preserve an almost continuous record of the positions and motions of the celestial bodies dealt with; whereas the prevailing custom (as illustrated for example by Coppernicus) was only to take observations now and then, either when an astronomical event of special interest such as an eclipse or a conjunction was occurring, or to supply some particular datum required for a point of theory. While Coppernicus, as has been already noticed (chapter IV., § 73), only used altogether a few dozen observations in his book, Tycho—to take one instance—observed the sun daily for many years, and must therefore have taken some thousands of observations of this one body, in addition to the many thousands which he took of other celestial bodies. It is true that the Arabs had some idea of observing continuously (cf. chapter III., § 57), but they had too little speculative power or originality to be able to make much use of their observations, few of which passed into the hands of European astronomers. Regiomontanus (chapter III., § 68), if he had lived, might probably have to a considerable extent anticipated Tycho, but his short life was too fully occupied with the study and interpretation of Greek astronomy for him to accomplish very much in other departments of the subject. The Landgrave and his staff, who were in constant communication with Tycho, were working in the same direction, though on the whole less effectively. Unlike the Arabs, Tycho was, however, fully impressed with the idea that observations were only a means to an end, and that mere observations without a hypothesis or theory to connect and interpret them were of little use.

The actual accuracy obtained by Tycho in his observations naturally varied considerably according to the nature of the observation, the care taken, and the period of his career at which it was made. The places which he assigned to nine stars which were fundamental in his star catalogue differ from their positions as deduced from the best modern observations by angles which are in most cases less than 1′, and in only one case as great as 2′ (this error being chiefly due to refraction (chapter II., § 46), Tycho’s knowledge of which was necessarily imperfect). Other star places were presumably less accurate, but it will not be far from the truth if we assume that in most cases the errors in Tycho’s observations did not exceed 1′ or 2′. Kepler in a famous passage speaks of an error of 8′ in a planetary observation by Tycho as impossible. This great increase in accuracy can only be assigned in part to the size and careful construction of the instruments used, the characteristics on which the Arabs and other observers had laid such stress. Tycho certainly used good instruments, but added very much to their efficiency, partly by minor mechanical devices, such as the use of specially constructed “sights” and of a particular method of graduation,65 and partly by using instruments capable only of restricted motions, and therefore of much greater steadiness than instruments which were able to point to any part of the sky. Another extremely important idea was that of systematically allowing as far as possible for the inevitable mechanical imperfections of even the best constructed instruments, as well as for other permanent causes of error. It had been long known, for example, that the refraction of light through the atmosphere had the effect of slightly raising the apparent places of stars in the sky. Tycho took a series of observations to ascertain the amount of this displacement for different parts of the sky, hence constructed a table of refractions (a very imperfect one, it is true), and in future observations regularly allowed for the effect of refraction. Again, it was known that observations of the sun and planets were liable to be disturbed by the effect of parallax (chapter II., §§ 43, 49), though the amount of this correction was uncertain. In cases where special accuracy was required, Tycho accordingly observed the body in question at least twice, choosing positions in which parallax was known to produce nearly opposite effects, and thus by combining the observations obtained a result nearly free from this particular source of error. He was also one of the first to realise fully the importance of repeating the same observation many times under different conditions, in order that the various accidental sources of error in the separate observations should as far as possible neutralise one another.

111. Almost every astronomical quantity of importance was re-determined and generally corrected by him. The annual motion of the sun’s apogee relative to ♈, for example, which Coppernicus had estimated at 24″, Tycho fixed at 45″, the modern value being 61″; the length of the year he determined with an error of less than a second; and he constructed tables of the motion of the sun which gave its place to within 1′, previous tables being occasionally 15′ or 20′ wrong. By an unfortunate omission he made no inquiry into the distance of the sun, but accepted the extremely inaccurate value which had been handed down, without substantial alteration, from astronomer to astronomer since the time of Hipparchus (chapter II., § 41).

In the theory of the moon Tycho made several important discoveries. He found that the irregularities in its movement were not fully represented by the equation of the centre and the evection (chapter II., §§ 39, 48), but that there was a further irregularity which vanished at opposition and conjunction as well as at quadratures, but in intermediate positions of the moon might be as great as 40′. This irregularity, known as the variation, was, as has been already mentioned (chapter III., § 60), very possibly discovered by Abul Wafa, though it had been entirely lost subsequently. At a later stage in his career, at latest during his visit to Wittenberg in 1598-9, Tycho found that it was necessary to introduce a further small inequality known as the annual equation, which depended on the position of the earth in its path round the sun; this, however, he never completely investigated. He also ascertained that the inclination of the moon’s orbit to the ecliptic was not, as had been thought, fixed, but oscillated regularly, and that the motion of the moon’s nodes (chapter II., § 40) was also variable.

112. Reference has already been made to the star catalogue. Its construction led to a study of precession, the amount of which was determined with considerable accuracy; the same investigation led Tycho to reject the supposed irregularity in precession which, under the name of trepidation (chapter III., § 58), had confused astronomy for several centuries, but from this time forward rapidly lost its popularity.

The planets were always a favourite subject of study with Tycho, but although he made a magnificent series of observations, of immense value to his successors, he died before he could construct any satisfactory theory of the planetary motions. He easily discovered, however, that their motions deviated considerably from those assigned by any of the planetary tables, and got as far as detecting some regularity in these deviations.