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    Venus in Sole Visa
    Venus in Sole Visa
    Venus in Sole Visa
    Ebook103 pages1 hour

    Venus in Sole Visa

    By Ken Shulman

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    About this ebook

    In 1761, with the world at war on five continents, 171 men from over a dozen countries were dispatched about the globe to observe a rare celestial event: the passage of the planet Venus between the Earth and Sun.

    The mission was conceived by British Royal Astronomer Edmond Halley nearly half a century earlier. Halley, who knew he would not live to see the transit, believed that if the event could be timed by observers placed at different points on the globe, it would solve a riddle that had tantalized man since he first began looking at the skies above him: the size of the universe.

    Organized by the Royal Academies of France and Great Britain, the 1761 expedition enlisted astronomers, adventurers, aristocrats, and clerics to travel to venues as diverse as Cape Town, Pondicherry, and Arctic Norway. Many of them braved searing heat, arctic storms, hostile villagers, stinging insects, and battles on land and sea to reach their destinations. The ship carrying surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon was fired upon by a French vessel a few leagues out of port. One French astronomer had his observatory shelled by the British, and was held for ransom in a Lisbon prison.

    "Venus in Sole Visa" sets the 1761 expedition in historical context, retracing the evolution of astronomy and thought from the Kingdom of Akkad to ancient Greece to 18th century Europe to the first NASA probe landings on Mars. Spanning from the Bronze Age to the Space Age, "Venus in Sole Visa" tells the tale of a 4,000 year obsession: our need to know about the universe in which we live.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKen Shulman
    Release dateMay 26, 2012
    ISBN9781476030142
    Venus in Sole Visa
    Author

    Ken Shulman

    Ken Shulman is a veteran journalist and author whose work has appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, Metropolis, and Artnews. He is a regular contributor to several National Public Radio shows. A graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School, Ken is the creator of the documentaries "BostonByDesign" and "Sierra Leone Searches for Justice," and the author of "Anatomy of a Restoration."

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      Book preview

      Venus in Sole Visa - Ken Shulman

      Venus in Sole Visa

      How High the Moon

      Ken Shulman

      Venus in Sole Visa: How High the Moon

      Published by Ken Shulman at Smashwords

      Copyright 2012 Ken Shulman

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes:

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever including Internet usage, without written permission of the author.

      Digital edition created by Go Published

      www.gopublished.com

      "No problem seems of a more difficult Nature than that which is proposed, to determine the Distance of the Sun from the Earth near the Truth."

      Edmund Halley, 1716 [1]

      On the METHOD of Determining the PARALLAX of the SUN By The TRANSIT of VENUS, June 6, 1761. Dissertation delivered to the Royal Society, published in their Transactions n 348, p 454. 1716

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      So Near, So Far

      Captivated in Babylon

      By Indirection Find Direction Out

      Venus in Sole Visa

      Parallax

      An Immodest Proposal

      The Winds of Mars

      Fair To Middlin’

      Voyage dans les Mers De L’INDE

      The Second Transit

      Momentum Momentum

      A Force Of Habit

      Eros and Echo

      On Earth As It Is In Heaven

      Notes

      Introduction

      On March 26, 1760, on the docks at the France’s north Atlantic port of Brest, Guillame Joseph Hyacynthe Jean-Baptiste Le Gentil de la Galasserie boarded an oceangoing vessel named Le Berryer. Registered to La Companie Des Indes, the corporation that administered France’s colonial holdings in India, the 800 ton frigate sailed a regular route between the Breton Coast and the Isle de France, an island about 900 kilometers east of Madagascar that served as the company’s Indian Ocean hub. From Isle de France, Le Gentil would seek transportation to Pondicherry, a Tamil city on the Southeast coast of India, and capital of France’s territories on the subcontinent.

      With favorable winds, a swift transfer in Isle de France, and barring any unforeseen obstacles, incidents, or delays—all of which were to be expected in 18th century marine travel—the journey from Brest to Pondicherry would take seven months. Le Gentil had packed sufficient clothing, books, and provisions for an extended sea voyage and an even longer stay abroad. The 35 year old Norman aristocrat also loaded a portable observatory on ship; the gear undoubtedly stirred some curiosity among the frigate’s 300-man crew—veteran seamen more accustomed to transporting soldiers, spices, and armaments between France and its colonies. Le Gentil’s few fellow passengers might even have mistaken his 15 foot telescope for the barrel of a cannon destined to shore up the defenses of some overseas French garrison.

      Their suspicions would not have been unfounded. Four years earlier, a long-simmering series of skirmishes between England and France had boiled over into a conflict historians would later name The Seven Years War—the world’s first truly global clash. The two European nations—and other powers— waged land battles on their own continent, as well as in Asia, in Africa, and the Americas. Hostilities also erupted at sea; ships like the one Le Gentil was about to board were often fired upon, and in many cases boarded, seized, and sunk. No seas were safe, neither the Caribbean, nor the African coast, not even waters just a few leagues out of English or French ports. Although a merchant ship, Le Berryer was heavily armed, with 50 cannons polished and battle-ready along its gunwales and lower deck.

      Le Gentil had traveled to Brest from Coutances, a Norman town along the La Manche where he was born in 1725. As a youth he’d hoped to enter the clergy; a late adolescent love affair and a passion for the stars drew him to Paris, where he married and began studies in astronomy at the College Royale. It was an exciting time for stargazers, with dramatic improvements in telescopy, timekeeping, and travel expanding their reach and grasp. At the Observatoire de Paris, Le Gentil helped determine the deformations of the earth. He also discovered several stars, and at least one nebula. In 1753, he observed a transit of Mercury—the passage of his solar system’s smallest planet between the earth and sun.

      It was on behest of l’Academie Royale des Sciences that Le Gentil agreed to make the trip to Pondicherry. In concert with the Royal Academy of Great Britain, l’Academie Royale had orchestrated a worldwide expedition to observe a rare celestial event: a transit of Venus, predicted for June 6, 1761. More than one hundred astronomers and explorers from over a dozen countries were dispatched through Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas to bear witness as the solar system’s second planet passed between the sun and earth.

      Le Gentil’s destination, Pondicherry, was one of many venues that Sir Edmund Halley had selected nearly half a century earlier. Addressing the British Royal Academy in 1716, Halley presented an ambitious plan to record and analyze the June 1761 transit of Venus—a transit the 60 year old British Royal Astronomer knew he would not live to see. It was, Halley emphasized, an event of the utmost importance.

      A transit of Venus is rare. The so-called morning star passes between the earth and the sun less than twice every hundred years. Yet there were many other rare events in the heavens. What made this event so compelling for Halley was his belief that it could yield a piece of information that had tantalized astronomers since they were cutting cuneiform characters into unbaked clay tablets in Mesopotamia: the distance between the earth and the sun. And that this measure, once established, would yield an even more important set of dimensions: the size of the known universe.

      The expedition that Halley had mapped out for Le Gentil and his colleagues was both dangerous and delicate. It wasn’t enough for them to watch the transit and describe their impressions in a journal. For the mission to succeed, they had to observe the eclipse from scores of latitudes, and time it within two seconds’ accuracy. Halley understood that an observer in Greenland would see Venus cross the sun near its midsection, where the sun is widest, while an observer in Patagonia would watch Venus would trace a higher—and shorter—path. By calculating the ratio between the perceived times of transit, astronomers could deduce how far their planet was from Venus, and consequently, from the sun. That piece of information—the so-called astronomical unit—would in turn allow them determine all other distances in the solar system. Timing was everything on this expedition, and researchers would need to produce laboratory quality results working in challenging and even hostile environments.

      As prescribed, Halley’s Venus Transit mission would have been daunting even at peacetime. With France and England at war from Manila to Martinique, it was downright scary. Yet Le Gentil’s memoire makes no mention of fear, or of doubt, just the Frenchman’s faith in his abilities, and in technology. "I have also been witness," he

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