stars which the Coppernican system required, because a vast empty space would be left between them and the planets, a space which he regarded as wasteful.[1] Biblical difficulties[2] also had some weight with him. He accordingly devised (1583) a new system according to which the five planets revolved round the sun (c, in fig. 52), while the sun revolved annually round the earth (a), and the whole celestial sphere performed also a daily revolution round the earth. The system was never worked out in detail, and, like many compromises, met with little support; Tycho nevertheless was extremely proud of it, and one of the most violent and prolonged quarrels of his life (lasting a dozen years) was with Reymers Bär or Ursus (?-1600), who had communicated to the Landgrave in 1586 and published two years later a system of the world very like Tycho's. Reymers had been at Hveen for a short time in 1584, and Tycho had no hesitation in accusing him of having stolen the idea from some manuscript seen there. Reymers naturally retaliated with a counter-charge of theft against Tycho. There is, how ever, no good reason why the idea should not have occurred independently to each astronomer; and Reymers made in some respects a great improvement on Tycho's scheme by accepting the daily rotation of the earth, and so doing away with the daily rotation of the celestial sphere, which was certainly one of the weakest parts of the Ptolemaic scheme.
106. The same year (1588) which saw the publication of Tycho's book on the comet was also marked by the death of his patron, Frederick II. The new King Christian was a boy of 11, and for some years the country was managed by four leading statesmen. The new government seems to have been at first quite friendly to Tycho; a large sum was paid to him for expenses incurred at Hveen, and additional endowments were promised, but as time went on Tycho's usual quarrels with his tenants and others began to produce
- ↑ It would be interesting to know what use he assigned to the (presumably) still vaster space beyond the stars.
- ↑ Tycho makes in this connection the delightful remark that Moses must have been a skilled astronomer, because he refers to the moon as "the lesser light," notwithstanding the fact that the apparent diameters of sun and moon are very nearly equal!
