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Updated: May 3, 2025
In England, America, France, and Germany, artificial transits were mounted, and the members of the various expeditions were carefully trained to unanimity in estimating the phases of junction and separation between a moving dark circular body and a broad illuminated disc.
It was long supposed that transits of Venus over the sun's disk afforded the only accurate method of determining the distance of the sun, one of the fundamental data of astronomy. Unfortunately, these phenomena are of the rarest. They come in pairs, with an interval of eight years between the transits of a pair. A pair occurred in 1761 and 1769, and again in 1874 and 1882.
Every observer should provide himself with a copy of the American Ephemeris for the current year, wherein he will find all the information needed to enable him to identify the various satellites and to predict, by turning Washington mean time into his own local time, the various phenomena of the transits and eclipses.
The discovery of oxygen, hydrogen, and many other gases, the isolation of aluminum, calcium, and other metals, showed that earth and air and water are not elements. With an enterprise that can never be too much commended, advantage was taken of the transits of Venus, and, by sending expeditions to different regions, the distance of the earth from the sun was determined.
We are almost equally sure that Venus, as that the earth is encompassed with an atmosphere. Yet, notwithstanding luminous appearances plainly due to refraction during the transits both of 1761 and 1769, Schröter, in 1792, took the initiative in coming to a definite conclusion on the subject.
The abandoned transits and other instruments and implements were found and brought back to camp. While this party was absent Tom took Mr. Newnham back to headquarters tent, where he explained, in detail, all that had been accomplished and all that was now being done. Late in the afternoon Dave Fulsbee and his little force returned.
Especially will it be remembered that the circumstances of the transits of Venus, which occurred in 1874 and in 1882, were investigated by him, and under his guidance expeditions were sent forth to observe the transits from those localities in remote parts of the earth where observations most suitable for the determination of the sun's distance from the earth could be obtained.
From these, five were picked out as referring in all likelihood to the same body, the reality of whose existence was now confidently asserted, and of which more or less probable transits were fixed for March 22, 1877, and October 15, 1882. But, widespread watchfulness notwithstanding, no suspicious object came into view at either epoch.
The alignments by which transits are produced, of the earth, Venus, and the sun, close to the place of intersection of the two planetary orbits, now occur, the first a little in front of, the second, after eight years less two and a half days, a little behind the node.
The political condition of the narrow isthmus of Central America, through which transit routes pass between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, presents a subject of deep interest to all commercial nations. It is over these transits that a large proportion of the trade and travel between the European and Asiatic continents is destined to pass.
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