Perceiving New Worlds: the Transit of Venus Across the Centuries

Randall Rosenfeld, Archivist for the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC)

For well over three and half centuries the Transit of Venus (ToV) has been perceived and experienced in divers ways, some quite surprising to twenty-first century viewers. Historical responses to the ToV are as varied as the rich cultural matrix in which they are embedded. "New worlds" were encountered by those actively pursuing the ToV enterprise as well as by those whose involvement took a more passive turn. Among those worlds can be counted deeper journeys into the contingency of scientific observations, literal explorations of peoples, places, and landscapes new to European and American scientists and their entourages, and artistic and cosmological spaces elaborated in the imaginations of those at home. The juxtaposition of contrasting and similar responses to the ToV - viewed contemporaneously as well successively - can significantly deepen our experiences of the ToV on June 5.

R.A. Rosenfeld is the Archivist of the RASC. His published work is generally concerned with artifacts older than himself, such as 17th-century selenographical drawings, 19th-century images of meteors, and the long history of observational detritus. He doesn't get out to observe enough.