out that the tails of comets are turned away from the sun, and also by his work Astronomicum Cæsareum, to which we have already alluded. He was probably called back to Denmark by the illness of his father, Otto Brahe, for the first sign of his having returned is an observation made on the 30th December 1570 at Helsingborg Castle, where his father was governor,[1] and it is known that his brother, Steen Brahe, who was also abroad at that time, was called home by the alarming state of his father's health.[2] Otto Brahe died at Helsingborg on the 9th May 1571, only fifty-three years of age, surrounded by his wife and family. Tycho has in a letter to Vedel given a touching description of his last moments.[3] His property of Knudstrup seems to have been inherited jointly by his eldest two sons, Tycho and Steen, the latter of whom was already the following year in a still existing document styled "of Knudstrup."[4]
Tycho remained at home after his father's death, paying occasional visits to Copenhagen, but spending most of his time in Scania. He seems to have found it too lonely at Knudstrup, and soon took up his abode with his mother's brother, Steen Bille, at Heridsvad Abbey, about twenty English miles east of Helsingborg, and not very far from Knudstrup. Formerly there had been here a Benedictine monastery, which, like several others in Denmark, was not at once abolished at the Reformation; but in 1565 Steen Bille had been ordered to take possession of the Abbey, "because ungodly life was going on there," and to maintain
- ↑ It can hardly be called an observation: "13 Hor. quasi post occasum ʘ vidi quod ☾ limbi illuminati extremitate distabat a ♃ per duplicem diametrum sui corporis, habebatque eandem præcise cum ♃ latitudinem visam."
- ↑ Danske Magazin, ii. p. 182 (Weistritz, ii. p. 50).
- ↑ T. B. et ad eum Doct. Virorum Epistolæ, pp. 1-3. In this letter Tycho, at Vedel's request, gives him a prescription against fever, and adds that he could give him others, but will wait till he sees him, as he does not like to put them in writing.
- ↑ Danske Magazin, 4th Series, vol. ii. pp. 324-325.
