Figure 4-7: A Nearby Object Shows a Parallax Shift Tycho Brahe argued that if an object is near Earth, an observer would have to look in different directions to see that object over the course of a night and its position relative to the background stars would change. Tycho failed to measure such changes for a supernova in 1572 and a comet in 1577. He therefore concluded that these objects were far from Earth.