Tycho Brahe was a Danish astronomer. He couldn’t use the telescope for his observations because it wasn’t invented yet so he used his eyesight and other instruments for his observations. He would split the sky into four different sections and make measurements of the positions of the sun, moon, stars, and planets. He then recorded the location of the objects in the four sections. By comparing his records from different times, Brahe could compare the locations of objects in the night sky to learn about the movements of those objects. His observations of the motion of objects in the night sky were far more precise than observations made by early astronomers, and they helped him to figure out how the Earth moves in space.

At first Brahe didn’t believe Copernicus’ theory that the Earth, moon, and other planets revolve around the Sun. He thought that if the Earth moved around the Sun, he would be able to measure changes in the positions of the stars resulting from the Earth’s movement. When he was unable to do this, he believed that the Earth must not orbit the Sun, thinking he had proven Copernicus’ theory was wrong. He didn’t know that these changes were too small to detect. Brahe’s later work with Johannes Kepler, though, helped to prove that the Copernican theory actually was correct.