The 1874 transit of Venus: New Zealand's first foray into international astronomy

Abstract

The nineteenth century transits of Venus provided astronomers with the opportunity to use these rare events to calculate the solar parallax, and New Zealand played a vital role. Apart from activities by local astronomers, international expeditions from England, France, Germany and the USA were based in New Zealand for the 1874 transit. Although many observing sites were clouded out on the vital day, New Zealand-based observations contributed to the determination of the solar parallax and led to further local observations during the 1882 transit of Venus.

Keywords:

• New Zealand
• 1874 transit of Venus
• Auckland Islands
• Burnham
• Chatham Islands
• Queenstown

Acknowledgements

I thank Peter Hingley (RAS Librarian) for providing Figure 3 and Professor Boonrucksar Soonthornthum for providing me with a Visiting Professorship at NARIT where I was able to complete this paper.