|
William Wales (astronomer)
William Wales (1734? – 29 December 1798) was a British mathematician and astronomer who sailed on Captain Cook's second voyage of discovery, then became Master of the Royal Mathematical School at Christ's Hospital and a Fellow of the Royal Society. Early life Wales was born around 1734 to John and Sarah Wales and was baptised in Warmfield (near the West Yorkshire town of Wakefield) that year. As a youth, according to the historian John Cawte Beaglehole, Wales travelled south in the company of a Mr Holroyd, who became a plumber in the service of George III. By the mid-1760s, Wales was contributing to ''The Ladies' Diary''. In 1765 he married Mary Green, sister of the astronomer Charles Green. In 1765, Wales was employed by the Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne as a ''computer'', calculating ephemerides that could be used to establish the longitude of a ship, for Maskelyne's ''Nautical Almanac''. 1769 transit of Venus and wintering at Hudson Bay As part of the plans of the Roya ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Astronomer
An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, galaxies – in either observational astronomy, observational (by analyzing the data) or theoretical astronomy. Examples of topics or fields astronomers study include planetary science, Sun, solar astronomy, the Star formation, origin or stellar evolution, evolution of stars, or the galaxy formation and evolution, formation of galaxies. A related but distinct subject is physical cosmology, which studies the Universe as a whole. Types Astronomers usually fall under either of two main types: observational astronomy, observational and theoretical astronomy, theoretical. Observational astronomers make direct observations of Astronomical object, celestial objects and analyze the data. In contrast, theoretical astronomers create and investigate C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transit Of Venus
frameless, upright=0.5 A transit of Venus across the Sun takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and a superior planet, becoming visible against (and hence obscuring a small portion of) the solar disk. During a transit, Venus can be seen from Earth as a small black dot moving across the face of the Sun. The duration of such transits is usually several hours (the transit of 2012 lasted 6 hours and 40 minutes). A transit is similar to a solar eclipse by the Moon. While the diameter of Venus is more than three times that of the Moon, Venus appears smaller, and travels more slowly across the face of the Sun, because it is much farther away from Earth. Transits of Venus are among the rarest of predictable astronomical phenomena. They occur in a pattern that generally repeats every 243 years, with pairs of transits eight years apart separated by long gaps of 121.5 years and 105.5 years. The periodicity is a reflection of the fact that the orbital periods ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HMS Resolution (1771)
HMS ''Resolution'' was a sloop of the Royal Navy, a converted merchant collier purchased by the Navy and adapted, in which Captain James Cook made his second and third voyages of exploration in the Pacific. She impressed him enough that he called her "the ship of my choice", and "the fittest for service of any I have seen". Purchase and refitting ''Resolution'' began her career as the North Sea collier ''Marquis of Granby'', launched at Whitby in 1770, and purchased by the Royal Navy in 1771 for £4,151 (equivalent to £ today). She was originally registered as HMS ''Drake'', but fearing this would upset the Spanish, she was soon renamed ''Resolution'', on 25 December 1771. She was fitted out at Deptford with the most advanced navigational aids of the day, including an azimuth compass made by Henry Gregory, ice anchors, and the latest apparatus for distilling fresh water from sea water. Her armament consisted of 12 6-pounder guns and 12 swivel guns. At his own expense Coo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Second Voyage Of James Cook
The second voyage of James Cook, from 1772 to 1775, commissioned by the British government with advice from the Royal Society, was designed to circumnavigate the globe as far south as possible to finally determine whether there was any great southern landmass, or Terra Australis. On his first voyage, Cook had demonstrated by circumnavigating New Zealand that it was not attached to a larger landmass to the south, and he charted almost the entire eastern coastline of Australia, yet Terra Australis was believed to lie further south. Alexander Dalrymple and others of the Royal Society still believed that this massive southern continent should exist. After a delay brought about by the botanist Joseph Banks' unreasonable demands, the ships ''Resolution'' and ''Adventure'' were fitted for the voyage and set sail for the Antarctic in July 1772. On 17 January 1773, ''Resolution'' was the first ship to venture south of the Antarctic Circle, which she did twice more on this voyage. The fin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Board Of Longitude
The Commissioners for the Discovery of the Longitude at Sea, or more popularly Board of Longitude, was a British government body formed in 1714 to administer a scheme of prizes intended to encourage innovators to solve the problem of finding longitude at sea. Origins Navigators and scientists had been working on the problem of not knowing a ship's longitude. The establishment of the Board of Longitude was motivated by this problem and by the 1707 grounding of four ships of Vice-Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell's fleet off the Isles of Scilly, resulting in heavy loss of life. Established by Queen Anne the Longitude Act 1714 named 24 Commissioners of Longitude, key figures from politics, the Navy, astronomy and mathematics. However, the Board did not meet until at least 1737 when interest grew in John Harrison's marine timekeeper. The Board administered prizes for those who could demonstrate a working device or method. The main longitude prizes were: *£10,000 for a method that co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Smeaton
John Smeaton (8 June 1724 – 28 October 1792) was a British civil engineer responsible for the design of bridges, canals, harbours and lighthouses. He was also a capable mechanical engineer and an eminent physicist. Smeaton was the first self-proclaimed "civil engineer", and is often regarded as the "father of civil engineering".Mark Denny (2007). "Ingenium: Five Machines That Changed the World". p. 34. JHU Press. He pioneered the use of hydraulic lime in concrete, using pebbles and powdered brick as aggregate. Smeaton was associated with the Lunar Society. Law and physics Smeaton was born in Austhorpe, Leeds, England. After studying at Leeds Grammar School he joined his father's law firm, but left to become a mathematical instrument maker (working with Henry Hindley), developing, among other instruments, a pyrometer to study material expansion. In 1750, his premises were in the Great Turnstile in Holborn. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1753 and in 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Journal Of The Royal Astronomical Society Of Canada
The ''Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada since 1907. The title in French is ''Journal de la Société royale d'astronomie du Canada''. The founding editor was Clarence Chant. The journal was preceded by the ''Transactions of the Astronomical and Physical Society of Toronto'' (1890–1901), followed by the ''Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Selected Papers and Proceedings'' (1902–1903) and the ''Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Transactions'' (1904–1905). The Astrophysics Data System The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is an online database of over 16 million astronomy and physics papers from both peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed sources. Abstracts are available free online for almost all articles, and full scanned ... contains issues older than one year back to the journal's foundation. References External links * Online acces ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of Norway. Bouvet Island, located in the Subantarctic, is a dependency of Norway; it also lays claims to the Antarctic territories of Peter I Island and Queen Maud Land. The capital and largest city in Norway is Oslo. Norway has a total area of and had a population of 5,425,270 in January 2022. The country shares a long eastern border with Sweden at a length of . It is bordered by Finland and Russia to the northeast and the Skagerrak strait to the south, on the other side of which are Denmark and the United Kingdom. Norway has an extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea. The maritime influence dominates Norway's climate, with mild lowland temperatures on the se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Bayly (astronomer)
William Bayly (1737–1810) was an English astronomer. Life Bayly was born at Bishops Cannings, or Carions, in Wiltshire. His father was a small farmer, and Bayly's boyhood was spent at the plough. In spite of the constant manual work he had to do, he took advantage of the kindness of an exciseman living in a neighbouring village, who offered to give him some lessons. From him he learned the elements of arithmetic. A gentleman of Bath, named Kingston, heard of the boy's taste for mathematics, and gave him some help. He became usher in a school at Stoke, near Bristol, and after a while took a similar situation in another school in the neighbourhood. While thus employed, he took every opportunity of increasing his mathematical knowledge. Nevil Maskelyne, the astronomer-royal, happened to hear of his talents, and engaged him as an assistant at the Royal Observatory. On his recommendation Bayly, in 1769, was sent out by the Royal Society to North Cape, Norway to observe the transit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeremiah Dixon
Jeremiah Dixon FRS (27 July 1733 – 22 January 1779) was an English surveyor and astronomer who is best known for his work with Charles Mason, from 1763 to 1767, in determining what was later called the Mason–Dixon line. Early life and education Dixon was born in Cockfield, near Bishop Auckland, County Durham, in 1733, one of seven children, to George Dixon, a coal mine owner, and Mary Hunter, a native of Newcastle who was said to have been "the cleverest woman" to ever marry into the Dixon family. Dixon became interested in astronomy and mathematics during his education at Barnard Castle. Early in life he made acquaintances with the eminent intellectuals of Southern Durham: mathematician William Emerson, and astronomers John Bird and Thomas Wright. Career It was probably the astronomer John Bird, an active Fellow of the Royal Society, who recommended Dixon as suitable to serve as assistant to Charles Mason in 1761 when the Royal Society sent them to observe the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tahiti
Tahiti (; Tahitian ; ; previously also known as Otaheite) is the largest island of the Windward group of the Society Islands in French Polynesia. It is located in the central part of the Pacific Ocean and the nearest major landmass is Australia. Divided into two parts, ''Tahiti Nui'' (bigger, northwestern part) and ''Tahiti Iti'' (smaller, southeastern part), the island was formed from volcanic activity; it is high and mountainous with surrounding coral reefs. Its population was 189,517 in 2017, making it by far the most populous island in French Polynesia and accounting for 68.7% of its total population. Tahiti is the economic, cultural and political centre of French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity and an overseas country of the French Republic. The capital of French Polynesia, Papeete, is located on the northwest coast of Tahiti. The only international airport in the region, Faaā International Airport, is on Tahiti near Papeete. Tahiti was originally settled by Pol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
First Voyage Of James Cook
The first voyage of James Cook was a combined Royal Navy and Royal Society expedition to the south Pacific Ocean aboard HMS ''Endeavour'', from 1768 to 1771. It was the first of three Pacific voyages of which James Cook was the commander. The aims of this first expedition were to observe the 1769 transit of Venus across the Sun (3–4 June that year), and to seek evidence of the postulated ''Terra Australis Incognita'' or "undiscovered southern land". The voyage was commissioned by King George III and commanded by Lieutenant Cook, a junior naval officer with good skills in cartography and mathematics. Departing from Plymouth Dockyard in August 1768, the expedition crossed the Atlantic, rounded Cape Horn and reached Tahiti in time to observe the transit of Venus. Cook then set sail into the largely uncharted ocean to the south, stopping at the Pacific islands of Huahine, Borabora and Raiatea to claim them for Great Britain. In October 1769 the expedition reached New Zealand, be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.svg "Click for more on -> HMS Resolution (1771)")
.svg "Click for more on -> Norway")
