Tycho's New Star Observation

[jankren]

Im taking Astronomy in college and Jesus ing Christ its super hard. Though at the same time its kinda interesting a bit. So I got to a point where we were talking about Tycho Brahe and his 1572 new star discovery. However, I didnt really understand it. I tried to ask my teacher but he was such an old and boring man that I just pretended to understand his explanation.

So can some explain to me about it? Moreover, please explain 'parallex' in layman's words.

[Juvenal]

Parallax.

Wikipedia is your friend.

OK, not having read the article yet, here is an answer off the top of my head. I recall that parallax is the phenomenon similar to that used by surveyors to measure distances (you must have seen them with their theodolites many times on building sites).

A surveyor uses a baseline of known length. He measures the angle from the baseline to the object of interest at both ends of the baseline (the object of interest is usually a boy holding what looks like a giant ruler).

A quick bit of Pythagoras and you can calculate the distance to the object, where the baseline is the base of a triangle with the object of interest as the opposite vertex.

We can do something similar for reasonably close stars. The baseline is the diameter of Earth's orbit. We photograph the object star and some reference stars at six month intervals (obviously trying to time the observations so that the diameter we are describing is at right angles to the line to the star).

The two star pictures can now be compared to see how far the target star has moved relative to the reference stars, provided the reference stars are chosen from those so far away they don't show any measurable movement themselves. Obviously the target star has to be a lot closer, otherwise the method won't work.

From the difference in position, you can deduce the change of angle to the target star between the two pictures. Now envisage a triangle whose base is the diameter of Earth's orbit, with angles from the base being 90^o less half this deduced parallax angle from the pictures... et voila! you can get the distance to the target star with that bit of Pythagoras we used earlier!

[Trey]

You should talk about Tycho Brahe's fake nose.

[Juvenal]

So I got to a point where we were talking about Tycho Brahe and his 1572 new star discovery. However, I didnt really understand it.
So can some explain to me about it?

It was a supernova in the constellation of Cassiopeia.

Here is an article.

Brahe had committed all the constellations to memory, so when he saw the star he immediately realised it actually was new (the word Nova means "new" in Latin).

The observation apparantly prompted Brahe to dedicate the rest of his life to astronomy!

The new star got to be as bright as Venus at its height, and was visible to the naked eye for about 16 months.

Tycho Brahe is a kind of exemplar to modern astronomers due to his incredible dedication to making accurate observations. Of course his student Johannes Kepler stole all his thunder with his law of planetray motions.