The last transit of Venus occurred on the 6th of June—that’s
when our charming sister planet last passed visibly across the face of the sun.
The 6 hour and 40 minute trip went largely uncelebrated around the world,
generating a fraction, I guess, of the hype surrounding a relatively mundane
lunar eclipse. The downplay is understandable—though it has nearly the same
mass as Earth, our oft-underestimated interplanetary distance renders Venus a
little more than an ink dot in the sky. It may be hard to believe, then, that
this puny astronomical curiosity once set the stage for one of my favorite
stories in history of human achievement.
It has been called mankind’s first international,
cooperative, scientific effort. In 1761 hundreds of star-searchers departed to
exotic locales from ports all around the world, and all because of a paper
written by the great Edmund Halley (a super-genius whose litany of brilliant
accomplishments does not include discovering the comet that today bears his
name) 45 years prior. This paper described how measurements of the transit
could be used to calculate the distance from the Earth to the Sun.
Unfortunately, transits of Venus occur less than frequently—there were none in
Haley’s lifetime. But, when the occasion came, the world’s scientific community
responded, including many future luminaries who would find greater fame in
later pursuits, the likes of James Cook and the duo of Mason & Dixon.
What makes the story so fascinating is what happens next.
This unprecedented, global scientific effort was also an unmitigated failure—at
least partially due to foul weather, hostile natives, and the fact that while
the scientific world was in a cooperative mood, their respective monarchies
were decidedly not. The personal tales of these men, tales of optimism, calamity
and woe, characterize the 1700s as an age of scientific adventure and ordeal
the likes of which would go unrivaled until we started sending men into space.
The instinct for adventure and ordeal feels lost, sometimes,
to my own age. Modern convenience is a luxury, but very much the sin of our
fathers. I’m too lazy to google what “generation” I belong to.
For me, there will always be a romantic significance to the
transit of 1761 as I picture the hundreds of scientists and staff setting sail,
leaving behind their homes for years, fully culturally aware that they were
pioneers in a bold age of discovery—that through their efforts and the efforts
of their contemporaries, the human race changes the way that it sees itself and
the universe.
