Transcript: Tycho Brahe is one of the most colorful characters in the history of astronomy. He was born into an extremely poor family and at a young age was essentially bought by his uncle, a nobleman, and so he grew up in wealth. Then, as a teenager he was lucky enough to rescue the king of his country and so received a handsome stipend with which he set up a fantastic observatory on an island off the coast of what is now Sweden. Brahe’s careful and meticulous observations over twenty years refined our understanding of the motions of the planets. They were the most accurate observations obtained in the time before telescopes. Brahe observed two supernovae during his life. And his careful observation of the motions of a comet he used to demonstrate that the crystalline spheres could not exist, and so he was able to destroy one more of the old Greek ideas. Ironically, Brahe did not accept the Copernican motion, but the quality of his data which he passed on to Johannes Kepler at the end of his life helped cement the Copernican revolution.