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Highlighting the History of Astronomy in the Asia-Pacific Region pp 225–241Cite as

The 1874 Transit of Venus and the Popularisation of Astronomy in the USA as Reflected in the New York Times

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Abstract

Given uncertainty surrounding the true value of the astronomical unit following the 1761 and 1769 transits of Venus the next transit, in 1874, offered hope for a substantial refinement in the value of this fundamental yardstick of Solar System astronomy. Part of the reason for this successful anticipated outcome was that both photography and spectroscopy would be applied to a transit of Venus for the first time. Consequently expectations were high, and this unusual event enjoyed a high public profile, thanks to frequent articles published in newspapers and in magazines. Because of the importance of this transit, many nations dispersed expeditions to Asia, the Pacific and the Australia–New Zealand region where the entire event could be seen. The USA sent out eight transit parties to this part of the world, and their activities and results, along with those of other nations’ transit parties, were widely reported back home. In this paper we focus on the US expeditions, and the ways in which their activities were reported on back in the USA through the pages of the New York Times.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    While observations of all of these transits are on record, Trejo and Allen (2004) have also outlined a possible Mayan observation of an earlier transit of Venus. Meanwhile, Stephenson (1990) carried out an unsuccessful search for evidence of pre-1639 transits of Venus in Chinese astronomical records.

  2. 2.

    None of the original photograph glass plates exposed at Campbell Town has survived, and in the course of an extensive search for photographic records relating to the Campbell Town program the photograph shown in Figure 9 was the only one that could be traced (see Orchiston and Buchanan, 2004). But even its survival was fortuitous, as it forms part of the astronomical records of Alfred Barrett Biggs, a Campbell Town school teacher with an interest in astronomy who assisted the American party during the transit program. Following the transit, Biggs went on to become Tasmania’s foremost astronomer, publishing a number of research papers – mainly about his micrometric observations of comets and double stars – in the Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania and in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (see Orchiston, 1985).

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Hocken Library (Dunedin, New Zealand) and the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (Launceston, Tasmania) for kindly providing Figures 8 and 9, respectively.

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  1. Centre for Astronomy, James Cook University, Townsville, QLD, 4811, Australia

    Stella Cottam

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  1. Stella Cottam
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  2. Wayne Orchiston
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  3. Richard Stephenson
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Correspondence to Stella Cottam .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Astronomy, James Cook University, Townsville, 4811, Queensland, Australia

    Wayne Orchiston

  2. Higashi-Ikebukuro 2-51-4, Toshima, 170-0013, Japan

    Tsuko Nakamura

  3. ASTRON, P.O. Box 2, AA Dwingeloo, 7990, Netherlands

    Richard G. Strom

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Cottam, S., Orchiston, W., Stephenson, R. (2011). The 1874 Transit of Venus and the Popularisation of Astronomy in the USA as Reflected in the New York Times . In: Orchiston, W., Nakamura, T., Strom, R. (eds) Highlighting the History of Astronomy in the Asia-Pacific Region. Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8161-5_13

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