Alphonsine tables. But otherwise the astronomy of the ancients reigned undisturbed. No advance had been made in the knowledge of the positions of the fixed stars, those stations in the sky by means of which the motions of the planets had to be followed; the value of almost every astronomical quantity had to be borrowed from Ptolemy, if we except a few which had been redetermined by the Arabs. No advance had been made in the knowledge of the moon's motion, so important for navigation, nor in the knowledge of the nature of the planetary orbits, the uniform circular motion being still thought not only the most perfect, but also the only possible one for the planets to pursue. Whether people believed the planets to move round the earth or round the sun, the complicated machinery of the ancients had to be employed in computing their motions, and crude as the instruments in use were, they were more than sufficient to show that the best planetary tables could not foretell the positions of the planets with anything like the desirable accuracy.
No astronomer had yet made up his mind to take nothing for granted on the authority of the ancients, but to determine everything himself. Nobody had perceived that the answers to the many questions which were perplexing astronomers could only be given by the heavens, but that the answers would be forthcoming only if the heavens were properly interrogated by means of improved instruments, capable of determining every astronomical quantity anew by systematic observations. The necessity of doing this was at an early age perceived by Tycho Brahe, whose life and work we shall endeavour to sketch in the following pages. By his labours he supplied a sure foundation for modern astronomy, and gave his great successor, Kepler, the means of completing the work commenced by Copernicus.
