Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Mar 2005
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005ahes...59..251b&link_type=abstract
Archive for History of Exact Sciences (ISSN 0003-9519), Vol. 59, No. 3, p. 251 - 266 (2005)
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
History Of Astronomy, Solar Parallax, Venus Transit
Scientific paper
Edmund Halley published in 1717 his paper on a method for calculating the Earth-Sun distance, using observations of the transit of Venus. His paper is in Latin. A full translation with comments was provided in a book by Ferguson in 1761. Ferguson published the first edition of his book on astronomy in 1756. In the third edition of this astronomy book in 1764, and in all subsequent editions, he added the whole of his 1761 book. A translation is therefore available in any of these editions. In 1809 the editors of the Abridged Transactions of the Royal Society included a translation of Halley's paper. This translation omitted some small parts not considered relevant to the main presentation, but they importantly retained his diagram and symbology. Ferguson's comments provide a guide to Halley's method but they do not provide an accurate picture. Ferguson illustrates the method with a completely graphical approach whereas Halley used a diagram to explain and illustrate his approach but his values of the observer's parallaxes were obtained by calculation. Also Ferguson does not reproduce Halley's diagram or symbols exactly and in one instance used a wrong dimension. The abridged version does not reproduce Halley's diagram completely. Halley's method is often referred to as his "method of differences". As well it is called a "projection method". He said it used "the doctrine of parallaxes". A critical review of Halley's paper and method is presented here using the diagram from the original paper. It is shown that Halley's calculation method gives excellent results for the Earth-Sun distance. The Abridged Transactions version of Halley's paper is used and extracts are provided where necessary. It is assumed that many of the concepts associated with a transit of Venus are well known.
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