Making Tycho Brahe’s Sky Accessible to Future Astronomers

Bertil Fabricius Dorch,Kaare Lund Rasmussen,Majken Brahe Ellegaard Christensen,Jakob Povl Holck

doi:10.1017/s1743921319000693

Abstract

AbstractCan we make a copy of Tycho’s “De Nova Stella” that can in fact survive a nova? At first, this may seem at best a nerdish, if not distinctly foolish question. However, it is also both a technological and a philosophical question: in fact, answering questions like this is linked to both technical, physical and sociological problems related to the long-term preservation and curation of objects from current and past civilizations.The undertaking presented here is two-fold: Firstly, we report on the results from a state-of the art short-term project, in which we have digitized and analysed three well-known rare books Pertain ing to astronomical observations by Tycho Brahe on the island of Hven. The project led to the creation of free e-books, enabling open access to the sky as recorded by Tycho.Secondly, we discuss some long-term issues related to the digital and physical preservation of scientific knowledge and heritage in general, exemplified by e.g. the works by Tycho.Future work includes further physical analysis of the books and fragments, a systematic extraction and digitization of the astronomical observations, digital curation and dissemination, as well as research into the possibility of creating representations and replicas of the works, durable on extremely long time-scales.

Highlights

The preservation of scientific knowledge and cultural heritage for posterity is a multifaceted and interdisciplinary endeavour, the feasibility of which includes solving central problems of a technical, a physical and a sociological nature
In order to consider the constraints put before us by physics, and to take a first step towards the extremely long time-scale preservation of knowledge, we ask the philosophical question, as to whether we would in principle be able to create a copy of Tycho’s “De Nova Stella” that could in theory survive a nova
It seems logical to assume that digital preservation of cultural heritage data is sensitive to the political priorities of resources and to the lifetime of technological societies, while history shows that physical objects can be preserved for hundreds or even thousands of years, often independently of the rise and fall of civilizations

Summary

Introduction

The preservation of scientific knowledge and cultural heritage for posterity is a multifaceted and interdisciplinary endeavour, the feasibility of which includes solving central problems of a technical, a physical and a sociological nature. In order to consider the constraints put before us by physics (and astronomy), and to take a first step towards the extremely long time-scale preservation of knowledge, we ask the philosophical question, as to whether we would in principle be able to create a copy of Tycho’s “De Nova Stella” that could in theory survive a nova. This is at first glance a naive question and is obviously referring to the fact that Tycho’s new star was a supernova type Ia (SN 1572). We discuss a number of challenges and perspectives related to extremely long-term digital preservation and dissemination of cultural and scientific heritage, setting the stage for much larger philosophical questions

The Tycho Project

Discussion and perspectives

Conclusions