Tycho Brahe's precision instruments
Instrumentos de precisión de Tycho Brahe
- Date
- 1582 · confidence high
- Place
- Uraniborg, Ven island, Sweden
- Credited to
- Tycho Brahe
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
Large mural quadrants, sextants and armillary spheres, with transversal scales to subdivide degrees, that allowed star and planet positions to be measured to within about one arcminute. It was the most accurate that could be achieved with the naked eye before the telescope.
Tycho described the equipment in 'Astronomiae instauratae mechanica' (1598). Ven then belonged to Denmark and today belongs to Sweden; subdivision by transversals had been used earlier by Levi ben Gerson.
What it led to
- the data from which Kepler derived the laws of planetary motion
- a culture of precision astronomy and care with measurement errors