Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- List of Illustrations
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 The Precedent: Transit of Venus Expeditions in 1761 and 1769
- 2 Big Science in Britain c. 1815–70
- 3 Noble Science, Noble Nation: The Establishment of Transit Programmes in Britain and Abroad
- 4 Inside Greenwich: The Preparations for 1874
- 5 The Expeditions
- 6 The Outcome
- Conclusion
- Epilogue: The Transit of 1882
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
1 - The Precedent: Transit of Venus Expeditions in 1761 and 1769
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- List of Illustrations
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 The Precedent: Transit of Venus Expeditions in 1761 and 1769
- 2 Big Science in Britain c. 1815–70
- 3 Noble Science, Noble Nation: The Establishment of Transit Programmes in Britain and Abroad
- 4 Inside Greenwich: The Preparations for 1874
- 5 The Expeditions
- 6 The Outcome
- Conclusion
- Epilogue: The Transit of 1882
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
The former Transits in 1761 and 1769, bring up before us the delightful voyages of Captain Cook and all that was recorded by Dr Banks and Dr Solander, and how, when in youth we first pored over the story in Hawkesworth's voyages we longed to fly to Otahetie and swim in the warm seas there. But all that is left to this generation, and the longest lives of those in the second after us, is to record the dry details of astronomers, and look at the negatives of photographers who were nervously anxious yesterday in the sunshine while the sleet and rain were falling here, and the north-east wind was blowing.
The Irish Times (Dublin), 9 December 1874It was a sunny morning in Jamestown, St Helena, on 7 November 1677. Given its extreme remoteness – St Helena is a tip of volcanic land in the South Atlantic Ocean equidistant between South America and Africa – Jamestown was surprisingly urbane in the 1670s. For over a hundred years, the port had been a supply outpost of the British East India Company and, before that, was used by the Portuguese. Far south of the equator, usually cloudless, formerly uninhabited and now English-civilized, St Helena was a perfect place to observe the southern night sky. In November 1677 one aspiring astronomer, a well-off twenty-one-year-old Englishman named Edmond Halley, was here to map the southern stars and to observe a relatively rare transit of Mercury. That is what he was doing on the sunny morning of 7 November, at around 9 o'clock. Halley had his telescope (fitted with a smoked-glass filter) pointed at the sun. A small black notch appeared at the outer edge of the solar disc, creeping into the limb of the sun. The notch grew into a small black semicircle. It was the silhouette of the planet Mercury, cast onto the sun as seen from Earth. Halley watched with special interest as, at approximately 9.30, the shadow's entire shape, a circular silhouette, finally completed itself.
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- Information
- The Transit of Venus Enterprise in Victorian Britain , pp. 9 - 20Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014