friends to order the construction of a large 19-foot quadrant of heavy
oak beams. This was the first of the series of great instruments
associated with Tycho's name, and it remained in use for five years,
being destroyed by a great storm in 1574. Tycho meanwhile had left
Augsburg in 1570 and returned to live with his father, now governor of
Helsingborg Castle, until the latter's death in the following year.
Tycho then joined his mother's brother, Steen Bille, the only one of his
relatives who showed any sympathy with his desire for a scientific
career.

On 11th November, 1572, Tycho noticed an unfamiliar bright star in the
constellation of Cassiopeia, and continued to observe it with a sextant.
It was a very brilliant object, equal to Venus at its brightest for the
rest of November, not falling below the first magnitude for another four
months, and remaining visible for more than a year afterwards. Tycho
wrote a little book on the new star, maintaining that it had practically
no parallax, and therefore could not be, as some supposed, a comet.
Deeming authorship beneath the dignity of a noble he was very reluctant
to publish, but he was convinced of the importance of increasing the
number and accuracy of observations, though he was by no means free from
all the erroneous ideas of his time. The little book contained a certain
amount of astrology, but Tycho evidently did not regard this as of very
great importance. He adopted the view that the very rarity of the
phenomenon of a new star must prevent the formulation and adoption of
definite rules for determining its significance. We gather from lectures
which he was persuaded to deliver at the University of Copenhagen that,
though in agreement with the accepted canons of astrology as to the
influence of planetary conjunctions and such phenomena on the course of
human events, he did not consider the fate predicted by anyone's
horoscope to be unavoidable, but thought the great value of astrology