page_title: Great Comet of 1577
section_title: Observations by Brahe and others
hierarchical_section_title: Great Comet of 1577 / Observations by Brahe and others
caption_attribution_description: English: The aproximate position of the Great Comet of 1577 (C/1577 V1) on November 16th 2013, as plotted by JPL Small-Body Database Browser.
context_page_description: The Great Comet of 1577 is a non-periodic comet that passed close to Earth during the year 1577 AD. Having an official designation beginning with "C" classes it as a non-periodic comet, and so it is not expected to return. In 1577, the comet was visible to all of Europe, and was recorded by many contemporaries of the time, including the famous Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe and Turkish astronomer Taqi ad-Din. From his observations of the comet, Brahe was able to discover that comets and similar objects travel above the Earth's atmosphere. The best fit using JPL Horizons suggests that the comet is currently about 320 AU from the Sun.
context_section_description: Using all the records to estimate the orbit, it seems that the perihelion was on October 27. The first recorded observation is from Peru, 5 days later: the accounts noted that it was seen through the clouds like the moon. On November 7, in Ferrara, Italy, architect Pirro Ligorio described "the comet shimmering from a burning fire inside the dazzling cloud." On November 8, it was reported by Japanese astronomers with a Moon-like brightness and a white tail spanning over 60 degrees
  While he was age six (some references say five), the mother of Johannes Kepler took him to see the comet.
  Tycho Brahe, who is said to have first viewed the comet slightly before sunset on November 13 after having returned from a day of fishing, was the most distinguished observer and documenter of the comet's passing.
  Sketches found in one of Brahe's notebooks seem to indicate that the comet may have travelled close to Venus. These sketches depict the Earth at the centre of the Solar System, with the Sun and moon in orbit and the other planets revolving around the Sun, a model that was later displaced by heliocentricity.
  Brahe made thousands of very precise measurements of the comet's path, and these findings contributed to Johannes Kepler's theorising of the laws of planetary motion and realisation that the planets moved in elliptical orbits. Kepler, who was Brahe's assistant during his time in Prague, believed that the comet's behavior and existence was proof enough to displace the theory of celestial spheres, although this view turned out to be overly optimistic about the pace of change.
  Brahe's discovery that the comet's coma faced away from the Sun was also significant.
  One failing Brahe had in his measurements was in exactly how far out of the atmosphere the comet was, and he was unable to supply meaningful and correct figures for this distance; however, he was, at least, successful in proving that the comet was beyond the orbit of the Moon about the Earth, and, further to this, was probably near three times further away. He did this by comparing the position of the comet in the night sky where he observed it (the island Hven, near Copenhagen) with the position observed by Thadaeus Hagecius (Tadeáš Hájek) in Prague at the same time, giving deliberate consideration to the movement of the Moon. It was discovered that, while the comet was in approximately the same place for both of them, the Moon was not, and this meant that the comet was much further out.
  Brahe's finding that comets were heavenly objects, while widely accepted, was the cause of a great deal of debate up until and during the seventeenth century, with many theories circulating within the astronomical community. Galileo claimed that comets were optical phenomena, and that this made their parallaxes impossible to measure. However, his hypothesis was not accepted.
  Several other observers recorded seeing the comet: The astronomer Taqi al-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf recorded the passage of the comet. The Sultan Murad III saw these observations as a bad omen for the war and blamed al-Din for the plague which spread at the time. Other observers include Helisaeus Roeslin, William IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, Cornelius Gemma, who noted the comet had two tails and Michael Mästlin — also identified it as superlunary. This comet and the observation that it was traveling on the earth’s atmosphere was also what helped Maestlin to explain the gaps in Copernicus’s planetary system. According to Maestlin, a comet would carry its’ own orb, since he considered comets to be part of the heavenly objects. These orbs, he suggested, are what fill the gaps in Copernicus’s system. 
  Additionally it was also observed by Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak, who recorded the comet's passage in the Akbarnama
caption: In November 2013 the distance between the Sun and comet C/1577 V1 was about 323 AU.[2]
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