They compass the whole sweep of Celestial
Geometry, and stamp their seer as unapproachably the greatest of
astronomers, as well as one of the chief benefactors of mankind.
The announcement of Kepler's first two laws was made in his New
Astronomy,--"Astronomia Nova, seu Physica Caelestis, tradita
Commentariis de Motibus Stellae Martis: Ex Observationibus G.V.
Tychonis Brahe." Folio. Prague: 1609. This he published in his
thirty-eighth year. The title he gave to this work, "Celestial
Physics," must ever be regarded as a stroke of philosophical genius; it
is the prediction of Newton and Laplace, and prefigures the path on
which astronomical discovery has advanced these two hundred and fifty
years.
An auspicious circumstance conspired to forward the astronomical
discoveries of Kepler. Invited to Prague in 1600 by Tycho Brahe, as
Assistant Royal Astronomer, he had access to the superb series of
observations which Tycho had been accumulating for twenty-five years.
Endowed with a genius for observation unsurpassed in the annals of
science, the noble Dane had obtained a grant from the king of Denmark
of the island of Hven, at the mouth of the Baltic. Here he erected a
magnificent observatory, which he named _Uranienborg_, City of the
Heavens.
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