Page:A short history of astronomy(1898).djvu/191

§ 111] was that of systematically allowing as far as possible for the inevitable mechanical imperfections of even the best constructed instruments, as well as for other permanent causes of error. It had been long known, for example, that the refraction of light through the atmosphere had the effect of slightly raising the apparent places of stars in the sky. Tycho took a series of observations to ascertain the amount of this displacement for different parts of the sky, hence constructed a table of refractions (a very imperfect one, it is true), and in future observations regularly allowed for the effect of refraction. Again, it was known that observations of the sun and planets were liable to be disturbed by the effect of parallax (chapter, §§ 43, 49), though the amount of this correction was uncertain. In cases where special accuracy was required, Tycho accordingly observed the body in question at least twice, choosing positions in which parallax was known to produce nearly opposite effects, and thus by combining the observations obtained a result nearly free from this particular source of error. He was also one of the first to realise fully the importance of repeating the same observation many times under different conditions, in order that the various accidental sources of error in the separate observations should as far as possible neutralise one another.

111. Almost every astronomical quantity of importance was re-determined and generally corrected by him. The annual motion of the sun's apogee relative to ♈︎, for example, which Coppernicus had estimated at 24", Tycho fixed at 45", the modern value being 61"; the length of the year he determined with an error of less than a second; and he constructed tables of the motion of the sun which gave its place to within 1', previous tables being occasionally 15' or 20' wrong. By an unfortunate omission he made no inquiry into the distance of the sun, but accepted the extremely inaccurate value which had been handed down, without substantial alteration, from astronomer to astronomer since the time of Hipparchus (chapter, § 41).

In the theory of the moon Tycho made several important discoveries. He found that the irregularities in its movement were not fully represented by the equation of the centre and the evection (chapter, §§ 39, 48), but that