Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) was an astronomer, instrument maker, and friend of the Danish King Frederick II. Tycho's father, a wealthy nobleman from a family of astronomers, built an observatory at his home in Uranienborg near Prague. In 1576 Tycho used this observatory to make accurate observations of a new cataclysmic event that changed the world forever: the reappearance of Halley's comet. Tycho's father was also a prominent astronomer
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His books on astronomy were widely read by other astronomers and were translated into Latin and other European languages. This made Tycho a very famous astronomer in his own time. He did not take up a profession in astronomy until after his father's death in 1576 when he was nineteen years old.
He went to Denmark where he was given an allowance from the king to continue his astronomical observations. In 1578 he compiled his observations into a book called Meteorologica—a book that would become one of the most important works on cosmology for centuries to come.