h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Tycho Brahe - Astronomer - A16311089 Author: Rockhound - U889233 Flea Market rescue: Entry: Tycho de Brahe - How the truth can be stranger than fiction - A708536 Author: Portable Chaos - U171738 Old PR thread:http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/F85507?thread=171482

to read tomorrow (sorry, had a late night last night)

This looks good, though you could perhaps use a couple more headers

There's a mention of the poisoning in A4197585 and of his death earning him a Darwin Award in A988798, and his tomb is mentioned in A190018.

GB - no worries, not normally up this late myself

Cheers Alex, I thought it was a tad low on links. I'll add them tomorrow and have a thunk about headers.

Top notch rescue Rock! I had my eye on this one, but you beat me by a nose And very well too. Enjoyable read, thank you.

My only quibble is a minor one - you've got curly apostrophes (they transfer over from other word processing packages) and they should be replaced by the ' (straight) ones. A tiresome task, but it is done because they can mess up the ML on certain devices (like mobiles and other software redaing packages) I think

Curly apostrophes done. If there are any more I've missed (pesky little things) let me know.

I've added another heading in - does it still need more?

Links – thanks for those, and I’ve flung a couple more in for good measure.

Scananavia >> Scandinavia

'Tycho Brahe Day >> 'Tycho Brahe Day'.

I think the extra header should be enough - it's just that 'Starstruck' wasn't a very descriptive header for that huge chunk of text, what with the subject being an astronomer...

Cheers all.

Fixed those typos.

Thanks Rockhound, I was so engrossed reading this, I'd have burnt the water I had set up to boil. Fortunately, not even I manage to burn water

enjoyed this very much

one source http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Brahe.html implies that his marriage to Kirten was not officiallysanctioned. That she was only a common law wife and therefor his eight children could not inherit.
As a result of this he left Denmark in 1599
and took a post as 'Imperial Mathematician to the Holy roman emperor Rudolph II' and there worked with Johannes Kepler as his assistant.

caution- before you cut and paste this please correct my spelling, spacing, and capitolization problems.

<>
could you change that to "A total solar eclipse had been forecast on 21 August, 1560," - as there are many types of eclipses

<> As she died after him, it's the other way around. Tycho is buried in the church of Our Lady before Tyn, in Prague. His wife Kirstine, who died in 1604, is buried next to him.

A few more links for you:
Mars - A330823
The Sun - A356852
The Moon - A399909
Stars - A418637
Astronomy - A346844

Rockhound, great rescue

How very interesting

'Taking his usual meticulous measurements, he realised that the object had to be far away from the earth as the star didn't shift its position relative to it's background over time – the phenomenon of parallax.'

I think you need to explain this a little better. I'm not sure from reading it what parallax is or if he was the one that discovered it - nor 'didn't shift its position relative to it's background over time'. Could you expand a little?

Apart from that - tremendous.

That's a good question Skankyrich, I understand what's being said (as an amateur astronomer) but the average reader may not (I'm not implying you're average there, Rich)
Rockhound, you could say "Parallax measurements are used to trigonometrically deduce distance between an object in space and the earth."
Or you could add a footnote directing people to other entries such as A578676 which was written by a professional astronomer (I believe MeganArgo is an astrobiologist now, she works at Jodrell Bank)

Under the word "parallax" you could link to http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~barnes/ast110_99/homework/hw9.html which has a diagram

Here is the moon's parallax: https://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagegallery/igviewer.php?imgid=3023&gid=227

I'm less than average in many ways, GB. I know what parallax is, but if I didn't the sentence I've pointed out wouldn't make sense. Just rephrasing or adding footnotes wouldn't help in my view, it needs expanding into two or three lines. The links suggested would be very handy, though.

I think I've worked out exactly what is so confusing. You almost say it the wrong way round; as it is, it implies that one would measure parallax specifically to show that objects are very far away. As far as my limited knowledge goes, you would use it to try to estimate how far away something is - there is quite a distinction. So it's not actually 'the phenomenon of parallax' that led Brahe to his conclusion, but rather the lack of it. So I think you need to explain what parallax is and how and why it is/was used, then explain that the supernova didn't show any deviation, and finally that this led Brahe to conclude that the object was a long distance away.

Incidentally, I think convention would prefer you to call him 'Brahe' throughout, rather than 'Tycho'.

Hope this helps

Traveller in Time trying to post before Doctor Who begins
"The crater Tycho is located on the moon

Tycho is also the God of Chaos in . . . . "