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Part 7 - USEFUL REFERENCES & LINKS

Berry, Arthur. "A Short History of Astronomy" (1898) Good general information. Includes detailed description of 1761-69 transits.

Chapman, Allan. "Jeremiah Horrocks, the Transit of Venus, and the 'New Astronomy' in early seventeenth-century England". Qtrly. Jrnl. Ry. Astr. Soc, 31 (1990) pp 333-357. An appraisal of Horrocks' achievement; an attempt to dispel some myths which surround him, and a discussion of his methods.

Ferris, Timothy "Coming of Age in the Milky Way", esp. pp 130-135 A very readable account of 17th century attempts to use the transit of Venus to measure the solar parallax.

Gaythorpe, S.B. "Horrocks Observations of the Transit of Venus 1639 November 24 (O.S.)". Jrnl.Brit.Astr.Assoc., 47 (1936-7) pp 60-68. This paper gives a detailed quantitative account of Horrocks' observations and the circumstances in which they were made.

Halley, Edmond. "A new Method of determining the Parallax of the Sun" (Phil.Trans., Ry. Soc., Vol xxix, 1716 pp 454-464). I copied this translation from the ‘Abridged Transactions of the Royal Society’ (Vol.VI). Any typographical errors are probably due to me using OCR and failing to spot its shortcomings. This is also mirrored (with permission) by the NASA/GSFC website. A fuller version (taken from James Ferguson’s ‘Astronomy Explained ...’ (1778 edition) is contained as an appendix to my book (Magavelda Press, 2001).

Hetherington, Barry. "An Astronomical Anniversary: The Transit of Venus 1769 June 3". Jrnl.Brit.Astr.Assoc., 80 (1969) pp 52-53. A very short summary of various expeditions. No attempt to explain theory or observations.

Horrocks, Jeremiah. "Venus in sole visa" (1662) translated as "The Transit of Venus over the Sun" and published in "Memoir of the Life and Labors of the Rev.Jeremiah Horrox" by Rev.A.B.Whatton (London, 1859)

Pannekoek, Anton. "A History of Astronomy" (1961) Good general information. Includes detailed description of 1761-69 transits.

Porter, J.G. "Transits of Mercury and Venus". Jrnl.Brit.Astr.Assoc., 80 (1970) pp 183-189. A very useful discussion of the theory of transits, with some reference to Halley's method of determining the solar parallax.

Ruddy, H.E. "The Transit of Venus, 1874". Jrnl.Brit.Astr.Assoc., 64 (1954) pp 304-309. A diary style account of the expedition of Lt. C.Corbet to Kerguelen Island.

Westfall, Richard S. "Jeremiah Horrocks" + "Edmond Halley". Internet, Galileo Project. Key facts relating to these two astronomers. Useful bibliographies.

Woolf, Harry "The Transits of Venus: A Study of Eighteenth Century Science" (1959). The authoritative work on the expeditions to the 1761 and 1769 transits.

LINKS TO LITERATURE AND ON-LINE LIBRARIES

A Selected Bibliography on Jeremiah Horrocks and William Crabtree

Transit of Venus Bibliography The excellent bibliography assembled by Robert H van Gent. With all its well-researched hyperlinks to original papers, this resource is hard to beat.

Internet Library of Early Journals Online copies of the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions, etc, for the period which included the historic eighteenth century transit of Venus expeditions.

Gallica The marvellous website of the National Library of France. This contains scanned images of many historic papers concerning the transit of Venus (Passage de Vénus), including those from the Académie Royale des Sciences and the Royal Society.

NASA ADS The NASA Astrophysics Data System. A digital library for Physics, Astrophysics and Instrumentation, hosted by the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for AstroPhysics. This contains links to many original papers on the transit of Venus.

LINKS TO RECOMMENDED WEBSITES

The Transit of Venus, June 8, 2004 Chuck Bueter’s wonderfully comprehensive compilation of transit of Venus resources on the web

De Venusovergang Steven van Roode’s Dutch website giving a detailed presentation of the history, future and theory of transits (some of the material is in English).

IMCCE Transit of Venus The excellent theoretical material of the French Institut de mécanique céleste et de calcul des ephémérides concerning the geometry of transits and the mathematics behind the derivation of transit times and the solar parallax from transit observations.

The Transits of Venus Juergen Giesen’s extensive coverage of material relating to transits (available in English and German).

Venustransit Roland Brodbeck’s website (in German) includes much material relating to the calculation of the solar parallax from transits.

Observing, Photographing and Evaluating the Transit of Venus Udo Backhaus gives a well-explained introduction to practical ways in which the transit can be used to calculate the distance of the Sun (available in German and English).

Transit de Vénus le 8 Juin 2004 PJ Javaux’s illustrated history of transits (in French).

Venustransit 2004 An excellent and succinct explanation of transits of Venus and their history and future (in German) with lots of links to other resources.

Futura Sciences an introduction to the history of transits of Venus (in French).

Planetary Transits across the Sun Fred Espenak’s authoritative website at the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Centre gives full details of the circumstances of past and coming transits.

The Venus Transit 2004 The public observing projected mounted by the European Southern Observatory.

Hoole Church - The Transit Of Venus 2004 Special website of the church that Horrocks is thought to have been associated with.

9. Relevant Books in Print recommended by David Sellers