Jeremiah Horrocks (nonfiction)
Jeremiah Horrocks (1618 – 3 January 1641), sometimes given as Jeremiah Horrox (the Latinised version that he used on the Emmanuel College register and in his Latin manuscripts), was an English astronomer.
He was the first person to demonstrate that the Moon moved around the Earth in an elliptical orbit; and he was the only person to predict the transit of Venus of 1639, an event which he and his friend William Crabtree were the only two people to observe and record.
His early death and the chaos of the English Civil War nearly resulted in the loss to science of his treatise on the transit, Venus in sole visa; but for this and his other work he is acknowledged as one of the founding fathers of British astronomy.
Horrocks made a simple helioscope by focusing the image of the Sun through a telescope onto a plane surface, whereby an image of the Sun could be safely observed. From his location in Much Hoole he calculated the transit would begin at approximately 3:00 pm on 24 November 1639, Julian calendar (or 4 December in the Gregorian calendar). The weather was cloudy but he first observed the tiny black shadow of Venus crossing the Sun at about 3:15 pm; and he continued to observe for half an hour until the sun set. The 1639 transit was also observed by William Crabtree from his home in Broughton near Manchester.
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External links:
- Jeremiah Horrock @ Wikipedia