affirming the judgment of his time. He not only conceived the necessity of supplying materials for the discovery of the true motions of the heavenly bodies, and by his improvement of instruments and accumulation of observations made it possible for Kepler to reach this goal, but in almost all the branches of practical and spherical astronomy he opened new paths, and made the first serious advance since the days of the Alexandrian school. Hereby he showed his superiority to the Landgrave; for though the latter had perceived the necessity of systematic observations at least as early as Tycho did, he confined his attention almost entirely to the fixed stars, and had to borrow the improvements in instruments from Tycho, and let them be worked out by the great mechanical talents of his assistant, Bürgi, before his observations could rival those of Tycho in accuracy. It was, therefore, not at Cassel, but at Uraniborg that the reform of practical astronomy was carried out, and posterity has not thought it an exaggeration when one of the greatest astronomers of the nineteenth century spoke of Tycho Brahe as a king among astronomers.[1]
- ↑ Bessel, Populäre Vorlesungen, p. 422.
