The 1882 Transit of Venus and the Popularisation of Astronomy through the Pages of the New York Times

Details The 1882 Transit of Venus and the Popularisation of Astronomy through the Pages of the New York Times The 1882 Transit of Venus and the Popularisation of Astronomy through the Pages of the New York Times

Jan 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21714607c&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #217, #146.07; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011

Mathematics

Logic

Scientific paper

After the disappointments of the 1761 and 1769 transits of Venus, the nineteenth century pair, in 1874 and 1882, offered astronomers the next opportunity to use these rare events in a bid to pin down a value for the solar parallax and hence that fundamental yardstick of Solar System astronomy, the astronomical unit. Only the 1882 transit was visible from the USA, and on the fateful day amateur and professional observers were scattered across the nation. While the value for the solar parallax derived from their combined observations was a significant improvement on the range of values obtained in the eighteenth century, there was considerable disquiet about the logic of using transits of Venus in this way when alternative approaches were available.
In this paper we discuss some of the observers who observed the 1882 transit from American soil, summarise the scientific results from the overall American endeavour and examine ways in which reports on the transit in the pages of the New York Times helped generate a heightened public awareness of astronomy.

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