Tycho Brahe's observatory. Coloured historical artwork of the observatory built by the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601). The building is sited at Uraniborg on Hveen, an island between Sweden and Denmark, and was built to make the most accurate measurements of the stars possible with the naked eye (to two arc-minutes). Despite this accuracy, Brahe's work suffered from his obstinate belief that the Earth was the centre of the universe, in contradiction to Copernicus' earlier work. 'Tycho's star', the remnant of a supernova he documented in 1572, is named after him.