San Antonio College Library

On his deathbed in 1601, the greatest naked-eye astronomer, Tycho Brahe, told his young colleague, Johannes Kepler, "Let me not have lived in vain." For more than thirty years, Tycho had made meticulous observations of planetary movements and the positions of the stars, from which he developed his Tychonic system of the universe-a highly original, if incorrect, scheme that attempted to reconcile the ancient belief in an unmoving Earth with Copernicus's...

"Johannes Kepler changed forever our understanding of the universe with his three laws of planetary motion. He demolished the ancient model of planets moving in circular orbits and laid the foundation for the universal law of gravitation, setting physics on the course of revelation it follows to this day. Kepler was one of the greatest astronomers of all time. Yet if it hadn't been for the now lesser-known Tycho Brahe, the man for whom Kepler apprenticed,...