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Kate Blackham

Dreyer and Opera Omni

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I finished 'reading' volume 6 of A History of Magic and Experimental Science - which is to say I read the entirety of the most important chapters and then used to search functionality of the Internet Archive to skim over other relevant passages in the rest of the book.

The next step is to take what I've read in HMES and look up the references in a primary (or at least closer to primary) source and for this I need J.L.E. Dreyer's help.

Dreyer is usually best known to astronomers as the compiler of the New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars, so whenever you see a galaxy or nebula with a name that starts with NGC (such as NGC 2359, Thor's Helmet nebula), you can thank Dreyer.

Dreyer is useful to me as he also compiled a 15-volume set called Opera Omnia (also available in the Internet Archive) which contains all of Tycho Brahe's correspondence and publications that Dreyer was able to source. Beyond the HUGE length of the work, another massive obstacle is that it is (as far as I can tell) entirely in Tycho's original Latin. Now I studied Latin for the first 5 years of my secondary schooling - I very nearly opted to study A level Latin, but picked Chemistry instead. And I've been revising and regularly practising my Latin with the intention of pursuing this investigation into Tycho Brahe. But I'm nowhere near good enough to translate a 15-volume set from Latin into English within a reasonable timescale. But what HMES and the other papers I've been reading have given me are starting points and ideas for directions to go in.

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