Page:Tycho brahe.djvu/52

30 come to an end in 1584, after the next great conjunction, and he was, on the whole, more of an astrologer than of an astronomer. Tycho asked him, among other things, whether he ever took observations, as he might thereby see that the Ephemerides, which he had with some trouble computed from the Alphonsine tables, did not agree with the heavens. To this Leovitius answered that he had no instruments, but that he sometimes "by means of clocks" observed solar and lunar eclipses, and found that the former agreed better with the Copernican (Prutenic) tables, the latter better with the Alphonsine, while the motion of the three outer planets agreed best with the Copernican, the inner ones with the Alphonsine tables. It does not seem to have struck him, nor, indeed, any one before Tycho, that the only way to produce correct tables of the motions of the planets was by a prolonged series of observations, and not by taking an odd observation now and then.

In the ancient free city of Augsburg Tycho seems to have felt perfectly at home. Dear to all Protestants as being the place where the fearless Reformers had declared their faith, and where the Protestant princes and cities of Germany had signed the "Confession of Augsburg," the city possessed the further attraction of having many handsome public and private buildings and spacious thoroughfares, while the society of many men of cultured tastes and princely wealth (such as the celebrated Fugger family), made it an agreeable place of residence. Among the men with whom Tycho associated here were two brothers, Johann Baptist and Paul Hainzel, the former burgomaster, the latter an alderman (septemvir). Both were fond of astronomy, but Paul particularly so, and they were anxious to procure some good instrument with which to make observations at their country-seat at Göggingen, a village about an