16. THE TYCHO BRAHE PLANETARIUM

Tycho Brahe (1546 – 1601) was a famous but quarrelsome Danish-Swedish astronomer. Brahe was notable for his golden nose. He had an unfortunate experience during a duel, and had part of his nose replaced by a piece of material made up of wax, silver and gold! He died suddenly in 1601 and left a vast and very accurate collection of astronomical data on the motion of the planets. It was on the basis of this that his assistant, Johann Kepler, was able to formulate his three laws of planetary motion, leading to our present day understanding of celestial mechanics.

The planetarium in Copenhagen, Denmark, is named in Tycho Brahe’s honour. It has interesting geometric components in its design. The shape of the building is a circular cylinder, with its roofline formed by a sloping intersecting plane. The resulting elliptical section demonstrates that the ellipse is a projection of the circle.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe

http://paulscott.info/DC/ellipse/ellipse-gen.html