Kepler's Supernova

October 9, 1604

A new star brighter than Jupiter blazed into the constellation Ophiuchus and remained visible to the naked eye for eighteen months. Johannes Kepler, observing from Prague, wrote a treatise proving the changeable heavens Aristotle had denied. Seventeenth-century Europe's last naked-eye supernova had arrived on schedule, offering a luminous rebuke to the ancient doctrine of celestial permanence.