Who?

Tycho Brahe invented the idea of work hard and play harder in the 16th century. Born a Danish noblemen, he planned to pursue study of the law. For young Brahe, it took one solar eclipse to convince him to change his path of study and to pursue astronomy. He was brilliant, secretive and stubborn to a fault. So much so that on a dark night in December of 1566, he challenged his third cousin Manderup Parsberg to a duel over a mathematical equation, resulting in losing his nose to Parsberg’s sword in the darkness. He was famed for wearing a prosthetic golden nose since that incident. Even though he couldn’t smell, that didn’t inhibit his ability to see and to discover new stars, make new observations about the moon, the planets and the solar system, and to see the universe as what it is: expansive and heliocentric.

Why?

His astronomical achievements landed him an invitation by the Bohemian King and Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II as the official imperial astronomer in the City of Magic, Prague. It was here that he developed the Rudolphine Tables with his then-assistant Johannes Kepler detailing star catalogues and planetary tables using observational data. His fascination with the unknown didn’t stop at the night sky, he was also an avid astrologer and experimented extensively with alchemy.

Why we love them...

Tycho Brahe boldly went where no man had gone before by pioneering new approaches to observing the heavenly bodies and understanding the nature of our solar system - our current knowledge of our cosmic neighbourhood remains rooted in his work and that of his protégé, Johannes Kepler. In the heart of the city of Magic, we hope that you will find time to gaze at the night sky and embrace life’s mysteries!