By Andrea Wulf
On June 6, 1761, the realm paused to watch a momentous celebration: the 1st transit of Venus among the Earth and the sunlight in additional than a century. via that statement, astronomers may calculate the dimensions of the sunlight system—but provided that they can bring together info from many various issues of the globe, all recorded through the brief interval of the transit. Overcoming very good odds and political strife, astronomers from Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Sweden, and the yank colonies organize observatories within the remotest corners of the realm, in basic terms to be thwarted through unpredictable climate and warring armies. thankfully, transits of Venus ensue in pairs; 8 years later, they might have one other chance to succeed.
Chasing Venus brings to existence the personalities of the astronomers who embarked upon this complicated and crucial enterprise and paints a vibrant portrait of the collaborations, the rivalries, and the unstable foreign politics that hindered them at each flip. because of those scientists, neither our belief of the universe nor the character of clinical learn may ever be the same.
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Additional info for Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens
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