The 1882 Belgian transit expeditions to Texas and Chile - a reappraisal

Details The 1882 Belgian transit expeditions to Texas and Chile - a reappraisal The 1882 Belgian transit expeditions to Texas and Chile - a reappraisal

Jun 2004

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2004jahh....7...25s&link_type=abstract

Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage (ISSN 1440-2807), Vol. 7, No. 1, p. 25 - 33 (2004).

Other

Transit Of Venus, Belgian Expeditions, Heliometer With Unequal Focal Lengths, Solar Parallax, Houzeau, Niesten, Vergara

Scientific paper

In 1871, the Belgian astronomer Houzeau suggested applying a new heliometric device to measure the position of Venus transiting the solar disk. This ``heliometer with unequal focal lengths'' produces a large and a small solar image, as well as a large and small image of Venus. Making the small solar and the large Venus image coincide would yield a measurement of the difference of the centers of both objects. Two separate stations equipped with similar instruments may provide a value of the solar parallax. After being appointed Director of the Royal Observatory of Belgium in 1876, Houzeau obtained support to organize two Belgian expeditions to observe the 1882 December 6 transit of Venus: one to San Antonio (Texas) and the other to Santiago (Chile). The observations were quite successful, but it took some time to take into account the effects that influenced the measurements, in order to determine the parallactic displacement. While the result was not overwhelmingly convincing, the experiment nevertheless was a fresh approach to determining the solar parallax. This enterprise was the first major expedition in the history of Belgian science.

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