History of Transits
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'The Noblest Problem in Astronomy'
'The Noblest Problem in Astronomy': This article look at the importance of
the distance to the Sun and the ways in which it was determined. Find out
why was this question so crucial---so crucial that the British Admiralty
went to the enormous expense of sending Captain Cook to the South Pacific
as part of a campaign to answer it in 1769, and in 1874 some eighty
expeditions spread out across the globe for the same purpose? Prepared
specially for this website by Dr William Tobin, Department of Physics and
Astronomy, University of Canterbury.
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Venus and the Rise of Science
Observing the transit of Venus was the first great act of international scientific co-operation, and it involved generous financial support by both government and commercial bodies. This article was written by Don Aimer, and is made available courtesy of NZ Geographic Magazine.
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Queenstown and the 1874 Transit of Venus
The English, French Germans and Americans dispatched expeditions around the world to observe the 1874 and 1883 Transits of Venus. One of the American teams, a US Navy research group, went to Queenstown where their observations contributed to the continuing international efforts to determine the Astronomical Unit. This short article by Wayne Orchiston, has been scanned courtesy of the Carter Observatory.
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Historical Observations and Global Expeditions
Source - The Great Lakes Planetarium Association
This website provides a rich set of links and resources reviewing transits from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.
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Book: The Transit of Venus - The Quest to Find the True Distance of the Sun
Source - Author - David Sellers; Published by MagaVelda Press 2001; ISBN: 0954101308
"Almost every High School child knows that the Sun is 93 million miles (or 150 million Kilometres) away from the Earth. Despite the incredible immensity of this figure in comparison with everyday scales - or perhaps even because it is so hard to grasp - astronomical data of this kind is accepted on trust by most educated people. Very few pause to consider how it could be possible to measure such a distance - the 'Astronomical Unit' - and few are aware of the heroic efforts which attended early attempts at measuring it. Unfortunately, even most popular astronomy text books give insufficient information to allow one to see precisely how the task was accomplished."
Here are direct links to the chapters on this site:
The Diameter of the Earth
The Distance to the Sun
Orbital Details of Venus
The First Observations of Transits
Predictions of Transits of Venus
To the Four Corners Of the Earth
Halley's Admonition
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Planetary Transits Across the Sun - NASA Resource
Source - NASA "Eclipse Predictions by Fred Espenak, NASA/GSFC
The transit or passage of a planet across the disk of the Sun may be regarded as a special kind of eclipse. Planetary transits are far more rare than eclipses of the Sun by the Moon. On average there are 13 transits of Mercury each century - transits of Venus usually occur in pairs with eight years separating the two events but more than a century elapses between each transit pair. The first transit ever recorded was of the planet Mercury in 1631 by the French astronomer Gassendi. A transit of Venus occurred just one month later but Gassendi's attempt to observe it failed because the transit was not visible from Europe. In 1639, Jeremiah Horrocks and William Crabtree became the first Europeans to record a transit of Venus.
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1874 Transit of Venus
The Melbourne Observatory in Australia displays images from the 1874 Transit of Venus International expedition teams - French, Dutch, English, Germans and Americans took part in the Southern Hemisphere observations.
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St. Michael's Church in Hoole
The Hoole Parish Church website features Jeremiah Horrocks, St. Michael's Church, history, the children's design competition and events to commemorate the transit in 2004.
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Transit 1761
Source - Transits, Travels and Tribulations, III by J. Donald Fernie on the American Scientist website.The Transit observations and voyages of the two other French expeditions of 1761, that of Jean Chappe d'Auteroche to Siberia, and of Guillaume-Joseph-Hyacinthe-Jean-Baptiste Le Gentil de la Galaisière to India.
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Transit 1769
Source - Transits, Travels and Tribulations, IV by J. Donald Fernie on the American Scientist website.Jean Chappe d'Autoroche succeeded in observing the 1761 transit from the town of Tobolsk in Siberia, having spent much of a Siberian winter getting there by sled, as well as narrowly escaping a lynch mob when an early thaw that flooded the town was said to be caused by his interfering with the sun. Nevertheless, he volunteered to observe the 1769 transit, asking only relief from snow and ice. The Académie Royale des Sciences in Paris obligingly sent him to Baja California.
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The French Expedition to Campbell Island in 1874
Good triangulation of Venus required observing stations as far separated as possible. It is therefore no surprise, at least on geographical grounds,that one of the three southern-hemisphere observing sites chosen by French astronomers for the 1874 Transit of Venus was the remote and uninhabited Campbell Island.
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Reanimating the 1882 Transit of Venus
From this Sky and Telescope website you can download a movie made from 147 plates of the 1882 transit taken by the Lick Observatory in California. This collection of photos constitutes the most complete surviving record of a historical transit of Venus. It's the shadow-show of an astronomical event that occurred when Queen Victoria sat on the throne of Great Britain, a moving record of an event seen by no one now living, and a preview of what millions will see for the first time on June 8, 2004.
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