Observatories · a Light

Istanbul's observatory was demolished three years after it opened

Taqi al-Din, chief astronomer to Sultan Murad III, built an observatory at Tophane in Istanbul in the 1570s, at almost the same time as Tycho Brahe was building Uraniborg on an island in Denmark. The instruments were of comparable size and design. Taqi al-Din observed the great comet of 1577, as Tycho did, and read it as a good omen for the campaign against Iran. The campaign went badly, plague came to the city, and the chief mufti gave the opinion that prying into the secrets of the heavens brought misfortune. In January 1580 the building was pulled down on the sultan's order by a detachment of the navy. Uraniborg ran for twenty years and produced the observations Kepler used to find the orbit of Mars.

Taqi al-Din · Istanbul, 1577 to 1580