Uraniborg

Uraniborg (sometimes spelled Uranieborg or Uranienborg ) is the name given to the palate and the observatory of the Astronome Danish Tycho Brahe located on the island of Venn, in the strait of Sund (this Swedish island today belonged at the time in Denmark). The palate was dedicated to Uranie, MUSE of the Astronomie, Uraniborg meaning “ the palate of Uranie ”. He at the time was regarded as the most important observatory of Europe.

History and construction

In 1576, of return in its native land after a voyage which had led it Frankfurt to Venice, Tycho Brahe had seems it decided to leave Denmark to settle with Basle and to build an observatory there. The king Frederic II of Denmark, friend of sciences, that the first work of Brahe had impressed, offered to this last a named small island Venn ( Hven at the time), as well as an annual pension, in order to preserve at his with dimensions his most eminent scientist. Brahe held moreover the supreme authority on Venn and perceived incomes on the work of the inhabitants of the island, which it managed besides like a true dictator. The king will also make build with his own expenses the palate, that Brahe will baptize Uraniborg, with load then for this last to pay the maintenance costs of them and of operation. Construction will spread out between 1576 and 1580.

The palate is built on the highest point of the island, located at approximately 45 meters above the sea level. Although relatively small (the principal building measured approximately 15 meters of with dimensions), this luxurious palate richly decorated with paintings and statues also included/understood the engineering departments of the instruments invented by Brahe, a Imprimerie and a mill with paper intended for the publication of its work, a laboratory of Alchimie and decorated gardens of many varieties of grass and plants. Drugs were seems it also prepared with the palate starting from these plants. The structure of the building on several levels, as well as the many very broad windows, the turns and the balconies, held astronomical place of observatory. The whole was girds of a wall of 100 meters with dimensions approximately.

Uraniborg quickly became a scientific center important and considered, attracting the students and the astronomers of all Europe, Brahe having simultaneously seems it counted to forty collaborators. Little time after the beginning of its research tasks, Brahe found its palate too exiguous to contain all its instruments, and the sandy ground on which the palate was built seemed too not very stable compared to the precision sought for its measurements. It thus made build in 1584 with approximately 75 meters of the southern part of Uraniborg a buried astronomical observatory called Stjerneborg (“ Palais of the stars ”); the instruments are installed there in underground rooms of which only roofs, or cupolas, exceed ground. This unit consists of multiples small towers whose foundations are inserted deeply in the ground until reaching the solid and stable rock. The roofs emerging of the ground could be open even completely dismounted to allow the observations.

Instruments and observations

The observatory having been built more than twenty years before the invention of the Telescope, the observations were carried out there without the assistance of any instrument Optique. With the assistance of its assistants and profiting from instruments which it does not cease improving itself, it however manages to measure the position of the stars with a precision never yet reached.

The instruments designed by Brahe were very imposing: from 2 to 2,5 meters for largest, it will describe them later in its work Astronomiae instauratae Mechanicae , published in 1598. Among those, it manufactures clocks graduated at the second, of which one which measures nearly one meter in diameter and which has 1.200 teeth. It is assisted in its spot by a team from twenty to thirty collaborators dealing of the observations or calculations.

The whole of these observations will give inter alia birth to the most precise and complete star catalog of the time. Counting 1005 stars with a precision about the Minute of arc, it will be used in particular basic with the Uranometria as Johann Bayer published in 1603. Johannes Kepler will be the first to publish the whole of the observations of Brahe with Uraniborg in the form of tables, in its Tabulae Rudolphinae in 1627.

None the instruments of Uraniborg survived until today, those having probably been destroyed during the time which followed the invention of the glasses and the Télescope, thus returning the instruments of observation to the exceeded and obsolete naked eye of Brahe.

Destruction

Some time after the death of Frederic II in 1588, Brahe loses supports it of its successor the king Christian IV, and in particular the pension which had been octoyée to him before. It also proves to be a quite poor administrator, of an abominable hardness with regard to the inhabitants of its island, blindly monopolizing the resources of this one for Uraniborg. Fallen in disgrace, it makes bankruptcy and is constrained to leave the island of Venn and even Denmark as a whole in 1597.

Very early after the departure of Tycho Brahe, Uraniborg and Stjerneborg will be destroyed by the inhabitants of the island, the stones being recovered for the construction of various buildings. In 1671, the Academy of Science of Paris sends the French astronomer Jean Picard on the site to measure the precise Latitude of the observatory, in order to validate some of the observations of Brahe. In the report/ratio which it submitted of its forwarding in 1680, the Voyage of Uraniborg , Picard notices with spite which only 75 years after the abandonment of the so prestigious site, only a part in hollow in the ground makes it possible to locate the site of Stjerneborg, and of Uraniborg remain only of the outstanding rectilinear monticules the site of the enclosing walls. Picardy will be obliged besides to dig the ground to find traces of the foundations of the principal palate. In connection with Uraniborg, Picardy written in his report/ratio:

“ But in addition to the displeasure that I them to be obliged to even seek Uraniborg with Uraniborg, I pus to see without some kind of indignation, that this famous place of which he will be spoken while there are astronomers, was filled with old carcasses of animals like an infamous roadway system. ”

The island of Venn is nowadays located on the territory of the common Swedish of Landskrona. In the Years 1950, Stjerneborg was the subject of archaeological excavations which allowed the restoration of the observatory. This one shelters from now on a museum and a multi-media center recalling the history of the site and that of Tycho Brahe. The gardens of the palate also form part of a project of restoration, trying to find the crop plants at the time of Tycho Brahe to reimplant them on the site.

See too

History of astronomy
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