Tycho's Data and Kepler's Model of The Solar System
Tycho Brahe had spent much of his life obtaining measurements of the position of stars and planets to a much greater accuracy than had been possible previously. He wished these observations to be the basis of a new and more accurate set of star tables. Kepler was able to prepare these new tables using Tycho's accurate observations together with a heliocentric model of the solar system and his own discovery of the elliptical orbits of the planets. Accurate calculation was aided by the newly published system of logarithms which simplified accurate calculation and made them less prone to errors.
Read more about this topic: Rudolphine Tables
Famous quotes containing the words solar system, tycho, data, model, solar and/or system:
“Our civilization has decided ... that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men.... When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“In mathematics he was greater
Than Tycho Brahe, or Erra Pater:
For he, by geometric scale,
Could take the size of pots of ale;
Resolve, by sines and tangents straight,
If bread and butter wanted weight;
And wisely tell what hour o’ th’ day
The clock doth strike, by algebra.”
—Samuel Butler (1612–1680)
“To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it—all my life.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery....Child’s play is the infantile form of the human ability to deal with experience by creating model situations and to master reality by experiment and planning.”
—Erik H. Erikson (20th century)
“Lincoln becomes the American solar myth, the chief butt of American credulity and sentimentality.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)