‘Rudolfine Tables

Kepler decided that ‘Rudolfine Tables’ should have an elegant frontpiece. He had an idea in mind and asked a friend from Tubingen, Wilhelm Schickard, to prepare a sketch of it. The frontispiece summed up Kepler’s concept of the world of astronomy, including its history, and was at the same time a masterpiece of whimsy. It shows a pavilion with twelve columns. Those at the back are hewn logs, and a Babylonian astronomer stands there using only his fingers to make an observation. Babylon was where astronomy had its roots. Nearer the front, Hipparchus on the left and Ptolemy on the right stand by columns built on brick. Closer in the foreground sits Copernicus by an Ionic column on whose pedestal he has propped his famous book, and Tycho stands by a Corinthian column with some of his celebrated instruments hung on it. He and Copernicus are deep in discussion, presumably about the Tychonic and Copernican systems, for Tycho points at the ceiling of the temple, where there is a drawing of his system. Kepler cunningly has him not telling Copernicus that it is correct, but asking, “Quid si sic?” (How about that)

Ringing the rooftop are six goddesses, each a symbol of something that helped Kepler in his discoveries: magnetica (on the far right); then Stathmica, the goddess of law; Geometria; Logarithmica; and finally the goddess holding a telescope and another with a globe that casts a shadow.

At the very top of the pavilion flies the Hapsburg eagle, with coins dropping from its beak, a symbol that needs no explanation.

Kepler did not show Tycho’s heirs the panels in the base of the pavilion before publication, though they would have approved the current penal, a map of Hven. To the left is a panel showing Kepler sitting at a table, by candlelight, a few numbers scratched on the gable-cloth, his major books listed on a banner above his head, and a model of the roof on the temple of the table before him. Tycho stands above beside the most elaborate column, but it is Kepler who has labored in the basement, at night, and brought about this marvelous achievement, this temple of the goddess of astronomy Urania, the ‘Rudolfine Tables,’ Very few of the coins are dropping onto Kepler’s desk.

The ‘Rudolfine Tables’ lived up admirably to Tycho’s and Kepler’s hopes for them. the planetary positions given by the Tables were much more accurate than those given by the Alfonsine or Prutenic Tables or tables that had been composed by Longomontanus and others. Predictions for Mars, for instance, had previously erred up to five degrees. The ‘Rudolfine Tables’ stayed within plus or minus ten ‘arcminutes’ of the actual position. In 1629, when Kepler was preparing an ephemeris for the year 1631, he realized that because of the dependability of his ‘Rudolfine Tables,’ he could confidently predict two ‘transits’ that would occur during that year – one of Mercury and another of Venus – across the disk of the Sun. khe published his predictions in a short pamphlet. ‘De Raris Mirisque Anni 1631 Phenomenis (1629)’ He would not live to see how superbly accurate he had been. ~ Pages 349 to 351