Hugh Aldersey-Williams

Those magnificent men and their stargazing machines

Violet Moller focuses on three 16th-century‘heroes of science’, John Dee, Nicolaus Copernicus and Tycho Brahe, and their great libraries and observatories

The great comet of 1577 passes close to the Earth. Tycho Brahe was one of its most distinguished observers, making thousands of precise measurements about it. [Alamy]
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  • Inside the Stargazer’s Palace: The Transformation of Science in 16th-Century Northern Europe

    Violet Moller

    Oneworld, pp. 304, £22

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