dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd) (11/11/84)
This is the anniversary of a famous supernova. More on Tycho's Star -- right after this. November 11 Tycho's Star On today's date four hundred and twelve years ago, a bright new star burst into view in the constellation Cassiopeia. Its appearance was a shock to people who knew the stars -- who'd watched for a lifetime -- and always seen them pretty much unchanged. Back then the prevailing idea was that Earth lay motionless in the center of the universe. All change was believed to take place in the earthly realm -- while in the realm of the moon, sun and stars, nothing every changed. But on that fateful night in 1572, a young Danish astrologer named Tycho Brahe saw the new star --and couldn't believe his own eyes. A change in the heavenly spheres shook Tycho's belief in his world -- as though we today would find out that our vast universe of stars and galaxies is only an illusion after all. Tycho called the event "a miracle" -- but he didn't stop there. He wanted to understand the new star. He measured angles between it and the other stars, and found that it didn't move. He studied the star for six months until it faded from view -- and by then he was convinced it was indeed an unprecedented change in the heavenly realm. Today, with our very different picture of the universe, we explain Tycho's star as a supernova -- an explosion of a massive, older star. But that understanding came hundreds of years later. Meanwhile, Tycho had found his niche in life. He left behind his role as an astrologer -- and went on to become one of the greatest observational astronomers in history -- who helped break the conceptual bonds of the enclosed medieval universe. Script by Deborah Byrd. (c) Copyright 1983, 1984 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin