[John Dee was one of many who observed and recorded the strange appearance of a new star in the cosmos. Since the stars stars had been hanging there unchanged ever since God put them there, a change was always disturbing. That something would change in the heavens was unexpected and ominous. John Dee and his compatriots were not naive but they lacked instruments and proof. The supernova they witnessed wasn’t identified until 1952. Thomas Digges, mentioned below, was raised in Dee’s house after the death of his father Leonard.]
“The appearance of the Milky Way supernova of 1572 belongs among the more important observation events in the history of astronomy. The appearance of the “new star” helped to revise ancient models of the heavens and to speed on a revolution in astronomy that began with the realized need to produce better astrometric star catalogues (and thus the need for more precise astronomical observing instruments). It also challenged the Aristotelian dogma of the unchangeability of the realm of stars.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1572
The supernova of 1572 is often called “Tycho’s supernova”, because of Tycho Brahe‘s extensive work De nova et nullius aevi memoria prius visa stella (“Concerning the Star, new and never before seen in the life or memory of anyone”, published in 1573 with reprints overseen by Johannes Kepler in 1602, and 1610), a work containing both Tycho Brahe’s own observations and the analysis of sightings from many other observers. Tycho was not even close to being the first to observe the 1572 supernova, although he was probably the most accurate observer of the object (though not by much over some of his European colleagues like Wolfgang Schuler, Thomas Digges, John Dee, Francesco Maurolico, Jerónimo Muñoz, Tadeáš Hájek, or Bartholomäus Reisacher).”
The Great Comet of 1577, following a mere 5 years later, was highly visible and observed by many, including Tycho Brae.
