1677 Tycho Brahe

1677 Tycho Brahe, provisional designation 1940 RO, is a stony asteroid from the inner regions of the asteroid belt, about 10 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered by Finnish astronomer Yrjö Väisälä at Turku Observatory on 6 September 1940.

The S-type asteroid is a member of the Eunomia family, a large group of stony asteroids in the main-belt. It orbits the Sun at a distance of 2.3–2.8 AU once every 4 years (1,472 days). Its orbit shows an eccentricity of 0.11 and is tilted by 15 degrees to the plane of the ecliptic. It has a rotation period of 3.89 hours and an albedo of 0.23 and 0.47, according to different publications based on the WISE/NEOWISE mission.

It is named for the great Danish-born astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) an early forerunner and father of modern astronomy. He is known for his unprecedented precise measurements in the pre-telescopic era. Brahe is also honored by the prominent crater Tycho in the southern highlands of the Moon and by the Martian cater Tycho Brahe. The bright supernova, SN 1572, is also known as Tycho's Nova.

Tycho Brahe

Tycho Brahe (/ˌtaɪkoʊ ˈbrɑːhi, ˈbrɑːᵊ/), born Tyge Ottesen Brahe (Danish: [ˈtˢyːə ˈʌd̥əsn̩ ˈb̥ʁɑː]; 14 December 1546 – 24 October 1601), was a Danish nobleman known for his accurate and comprehensive astronomical and planetary observations. He was born in Scania, then part of Denmark, now part of modern-day Sweden. Tycho was well known in his lifetime as an astronomer, astrologer and alchemist, and has been described more recently as "the first competent mind in modern astronomy to feel ardently the passion for exact empirical facts."

In his De nova stella (On the new star) of 1573, he refuted the Aristotelian belief in an unchanging celestial realm. His precise measurements indicated that "new stars" (stellae novae, now known as supernovae), in particular that of 1572, lacked the parallax expected in sub-lunar phenomena, and were therefore not tailless comets in the atmosphere as previously believed, but were above the atmosphere and moon. Using similar measurements he showed that comets were also not atmospheric phenomena, as previously thought, and must pass through the supposedly immutable celestial spheres.

Tycho Brahe (album)

Tycho Brahe is the second album by Lightwave, released in 1993 through Crystal Lake.

Track listing

Personnel

References

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Penny Arcade

Penny Arcade is a webcomic focused on video games and video game culture, written by Jerry Holkins and illustrated by Mike Krahulik. The comic debuted in 1998 on the website loonygames.com. Since then, Holkins and Krahulik have established their own site, which is typically updated with a new comic strip each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The comics are accompanied by regular updates on the site's blog.

Penny Arcade is among the most popular and longest running gaming webcomics currently online, listed in 2010 as having 3.5 million readers. Holkins and Krahulik are among the few and first webcomic creators successful enough to make a living from their work. In addition to the comic, Holkins and Krahulik also created Child's Play, a children's charity; PAX, an annual gaming convention, and the episodic video game Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness with Hothead Games and Zeboyd Games.

Overview

The strip features Krahulik and Holkins' cartoon alter egos, John "Gabe" Gabriel and Tycho Brahe, respectively. While often borrowing from the authors' experiences, Holkins and Krahulik do not treat them as literal avatars or caricatures of themselves. The two characters spend much of their time playing and commenting on computer and video games, which forms the basis of the humor in the strip. Most of the time Gabe serves the purpose of the comic and Tycho the comic foil. The strip can feature in-jokes that are explained in the news posts accompanying each comic, written by the authors.

Brahe

Brahe (originally Bragde) is the name of a Scanian noble family that was influential in both Danish and Swedish history but has its family roots in Sweden. The first member of the family is speculated to have been Verner Braghde from Halland. Better documented is Peder Axelsen Brahe who appears in late 14th century records. He fathered two sons, Thorkild and Axel Pedersen Brahe. What later became the Danish branch descended from Axel and what later became the Swedish, descended from Thorkild's daughter, Johanna Torkildsdotter Brahe.

Per Brahe was in 1561 granted dignity as a count by Eric XIV of Sweden and in 1620 was the family introduced on the Swedish House of Knights (Riddarhuset) as the first counts.

Danish family

55 Cancri c

55 Cancri c (abbreviated 55 Cnc c), also named Brahe, is an extrasolar planet in an eccentric orbit around the Sun-like star 55 Cancri A, making one revolution every 44.34 days. It is the third known planet in order of distance from its star. 55 Cancri c was discovered on June 13, 2002 and has a mass roughly half of Saturn.

In July 2014 the International Astronomical Union launched a process for giving proper names to certain exoplanets and their host stars. The process involved public nomination and voting for the new names. In December 2015, the IAU announced the winning name was Brahe for this planet. The winning name was submitted by the Royal Netherlands Association for Meteorology and Astronomy of the Netherlands. It honors the astronomer Tycho Brahe.

Discovery

Like the majority of known extrasolar planets, 55 Cancri c was detected by observing changes in its star's radial velocity. This was achieved by making sensitive measurements of the Doppler shift of the star's spectrum. At the time of discovery, 55 Cancri A was already known to possess one planet (55 Cancri b); however, there was still a drift in the radial velocity measurements which was unaccounted for.