As of the end of 1585, Tycho's life and work on Hven had probably proceeded about as he had expected it would when he settled on the island. To be sure, the building of Uraniborg and its ancillary facilities, particularly his instruments, had taken longer than he had thought it would. But the finished product – as epitomized in his underground observatory, Stjerneborg – was better than the minute-of-arc accuracy he had originally sought, and, in addition, Tycho had had the opportunity and hence the obligation to deal with more extraordinary astronomical phenomena than he could possibly have foreseen.

Each comet had contributed grist for Tycho's mill. The one in 1580 had gone around the sun, just as that of 1577 had. The comet of 1582 had shown a tail pointing away from Venus, just as the great tail of the comet of 1577 had. That of 1585 had displayed no tail at all, which, as far as Tycho was concerned, merely meant that its tail was directed behind it away from the sun and was not visible because the comet was in opposition to the sun. The pieces were beginning to fall in place: His observations of the comet of 1585 were in press; his manuscript on the comet of 1577 was going through right after it; and if Tycho had not yet decided to publish a work summarizing the appearances of all the comets he had observed, he soon would.