The last dance between Venus and the sun

Thursday, May 31, 2012 - 16:43 in Astronomy & Space

In 1761, Harvard’s Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Philosophy John Winthrop loaded a grandfather clock and a couple of students into a boat and embarked on Harvard’s first astronomical expedition. They set out on the provincial sloop, under orders from Massachusetts Bay Gov. Francis Bernard to convey them to Newfoundland, North America’s easternmost settlement, so that Winthrop could view one of nature’s rarest astronomical phenomena: Venus’ passage across the face of the sun. Called a “transit of Venus,” the event is an eclipse of the sun by Venus. In this case, however, Venus appears as a black dot that tracks a line across the sun’s face for several hours. On June 5 of this year, skywatchers around the world will watch the sun to catch a glimpse of the same event, which remains a curiosity for many, even if it has lost much of the scientific importance it bore when Winthrop voyaged...

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