Transit of Venus March
Image Gallery
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James Ferguson, engraving from
Astronomy explained upon Sir Isaac
Newton's Principles..., 1790.
[QB42.F18 1790 Toner Coll.]
The above illustration shows an
orrery designed by Ferguson that
would reproduce the movements of
the planets Mercury, Venus and
Earth. The display, however, does
not represent the planetary
positions on transit day, June 6,
1761, when Venus passed directly
between Earth and the Sun.
Many images depicting the Transit of Venus can be found in the collections of the Library of Congress. For this Web presentation, we selected several historic engravings and drawings as well as a printing of an article published by Benjamin Franklin in the journal of the Royal Society of London.
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James Ferguson, engraving from Astronomy explained upon Sir Isaac Newton's Principles..., 1790. [QB42.F18 1790 Toner Coll.]
This image shows the locations from which the transit of Venus could be observed on June 6, 1761, and local times at which the transit began and ended.
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James Ferguson, engraving from Astronomy explained upon Sir Isaac Newton's Principles..., 1790. [QB42.F18 1790 Toner Coll.]
This image details the transit of Venus across the Sun on June 6, 1761, as viewed from London. Drawings such as this were the common means of rendering the transit in many books and journals of the time, prior to the advent of photographic techniques.
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La nature: revue des sciences
et de leurs applications aux arts
et à l'industrie, Dec. 1873 p.55
This illustration accompanies an
article on the then-upcoming
1874 transit.
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Nicholas Ypey, Afbeelding van den weg der planeet Venus, 1761. [Rare Books,
QB511.Y8]
A beautiful drawing of the transit of Venus of
1761, by Nicholas Ypey. Although the coronal
detail on the sun is not actually observable,
the path of the transit is accurately depicted.
![Image: Christian Mayer, Iz'iasnen ie prokhozhden..., [1769].](images/mayeriv-640.jpg)
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Christian Mayer, Iz'iasnen ie
prokhozhden..., [1769]. [Rare
Books, QB511.M3 Yudin
Collection]
The location and path of the
transit of Venus depends on
your location on Earth. This
drawing by Christian Mayer
shows how the position of
Venus would appear from
various vantage points on Earth.
"Observations of the Transit of Venus over the Sun, June 3, 1769, made by Mr. Owen Biddle and Mr. Joel Bayley, at Lewestown, in Pennsylvania. Communicated by Benjamin Franklin, LL.D., F.R.S." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1769. Vol. 59 pp 414-21.
In 1769 Benjamin Franklin published an article in the prestigious journal of the Royal Society of London presenting the transit of Venus observations of Messrs. Biddle and Bayley. Some historians credit this account from pre-revolutionary America as the first occasion on which American science went on display before the international community, an occasion made all the more propitious for involving a natural phenomenon that galvanized international attention in the scientific community. This journal edition contains, as well, numerous other articles from contributors worldwide regarding the transit of Venus of 1769.