predecessor, justly says that the "restoration of astronomy" was "by that Phœnix of astronomers, Tycho, first conceived and determined on in the year 1564."[1]
While occupied with the study of astronomy and occasional observations, Tycho, like everybody else at that time, believed in judicial astrology, and now and then worked out horoscopes for his friends. He even kept a book in which he entered these "themata genethliaca." He mentions in a letter,[2] written in 1588 to the mathematician Caspar Peucer, the son-in-law of Melanchthon, that he had during his stay at Leipzig made out the nativity of Peucer, and found that he was to meet with great misfortunes, either exile or imprisonment, and that he should become free when about sixty years of age, through the agency of some "martial" person. This prediction chanced to turn out correct, as Peucer in 1574 was deprived of his professorship at Wittenberg, and kept in a rigorous imprisonment till 1586, being suspected of a leaning to Calvinism. From a lunar eclipse which took place while he was at Leipzig, Tycho foretold wet weather, which also turned out to be correct.[3]
Tycho left Leipzig on the 17th May 1565 with Vedel
- ↑ Tabulæ Rudolphinæ, title-page.
- ↑ Printed in Resenii Inscriptiones Hafnienses (Hafniæ, 1668), pp. 392 et seq.; and in Weistritz, Lebensbeschreibung des T. v. Brahe, i. pp. 239 et seq. (the matter referred to occurs on p. 259).
- ↑ In the volume of observations, 1563-81, there follow, after April 19, 1565, sixteen pages headed "Notationes interiectæ," of various contents. On a vacant quarter page is written in a different hand: "Duobus sequentibus annis nullæ extant observationes Brahei, sed earum loco sequebantur annotationes qualescunque in codice." Also in another hand is the following: "Tycho Brahe Tomo II. Epistolarum aliqvando excuso sed non edito fol. 54 scribit se hujus eclipsis tempore adhuc Lipsiæ studiorum causa commoratum, et pluvium tempus cum meteoris humidis ex hac eclipsi prædixisse." Among the notes is also "Observatio XII. dierum et noctium statim sequentium natalem Christi in Anno 1564 completo, pro constitutione et temperamento 12 mensium Anni 1565 proxime seqventis." The probable weather for January is concluded from the weather on December 26th; that for February from the 27th, and so on.
