Today in History: Supernova 1604 spotted, 1604 (around the world!)

This is super cool.  I didn't paste the whole piece but you should read it if you have the chance. 

More than 400 years ago, a bright new star appeared in the sky. Its appearance helped a groundbreaking generation of astronomers puzzle out new things about how the universe worked.
Supernova 1604 has long been referred to as “Kepler’s Supernova,” after astronomer Johannes Kepler, who was one of the first to observe it. “Brighter than all other stars and planets at its peak, it was observed by German astronomer Johannes Kepler, who thought he was looking at a new star,” writes Megan Gannon for Space.com. “Centuries later, scientists determined that what Kepler saw was actually an exploding star.” This supernova posed a challenge to seventeenth-century astronomers, who found themselves observing something that contradicted all conventional wisdom about the cosmos.
The conventional view of the cosmos placed the Earth at the center of our solar system, and in fact the whole universe. This Earth-centric worldview came originally from Aristotle and Ptolemy, two ancient philosophers. Aristotle’s On the Heavens said that the Earth was the realm of imperfect things and was changeable, while things far away from the Earth were perfect and didn’t change. From these principles, he developed a complicated model that could (sort of) accurately predict the movement of planets in the Solar System and other observable phenomena.  

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-1604-supernova-presented-challenge-astronomers-180965138/


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