for Frauenburg, spent five days there, departed for Dantzig on the 4th July, started from thence on the 7th, and was back at Hveen on the 23rd.[1]
Valuable as these results of the journey were, Elias brought something else home with him which was perhaps even more valued by Tycho. One of the canons at Frauenburg, Johannes Hannov, sent him the instrument used by Copernicus and made by his own hands. It was a triquetrum eight feet long, made of pine-wood, and divided by ink-marks, the two equal arms into 1000 parts, the long arm into 1414 parts. Tycho placed this scientific relic in the northern observatory at Uraniborg, and the very day he received it (the 23rd July) he composed a Latin poem expressing his enthusiastic delight at possessing an instrument which had belonged to this great man, whose name he never mentioned without some expression of admiration.[2] This feeling he also gave vent to in the poem which he a few months later wrote and placed under the portrait of Copernicus in his library. Possibly he had received this portrait on the same occasion as the instrument.[3]
The name of Elias Olsen is also connected with the first book printed at Uraniborg, an astrological and meteorological diary for the year 1586, somewhat similar to the one drawn up by Tycho for the year 1573. It also contains an account of the comet of 1585, which had been observed at Hveen from the 18th October to the 15th November. The little book is dated the 1st January 1586, and is dedicated
- ↑ The dates are from the meteorological diary. Friis (T. Brahe, p. 133) tells his readers that Elias went to Regensburg (Regiomontum!!) without remarking the wonderful speed with which he would have had to travel to reach Regensburg from the shore of the Baltic in less than two days.
- ↑ Epist. Astr., p. 235; Gassendi, p. 57.
- ↑ Epist., p. 240.
Ædibus Hortensibus illustrissimi Marchionis ducis Borussiæ Regiomonti;" they are similar to those made at Frauenburg, and extend from June 11 to 26 (MS. volume of Obs.).
