This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. |
This article is rated GA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
1639 transit of Venus has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it. | ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the "
Did you know?" column on
June 5, 2012. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that the
transit of Venus of 1639, predicted by self-taught astronomer
Jeremiah Horrocks, was only seen and recorded by himself and his friend
William Crabtree? | ||||||||||
Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the " On this day..." column on December 4, 2015, December 4, 2017, December 4, 2020, and December 4, 2023. |
I added a few lines at the beginning of the "Results" section. His observation didn't really allow him to determine the distance (AU=astronomical unit). (It takes careful measurements, including timing, at two places far removed from each other, as was done in later observation campaigns.) It seems Horrocks was mainly interested in measuring the apparent size of Venus (as was his colleague Crabtree). He then used an assumption which it seems was more or less shared by some other contemporaries, that the sizes (diameters) of the planets were proportional to their distance from the sun. This then would of course allows to determine the actual distance of Venus (expressed in earth radii) and thus the AU. Thus this was more of a lucky guess, as Venus is only some rough 30% larger than what would be expected from the assumed "law". For the moment I don't have a better reference than: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2005A%26G....46a..14H
Greetings, 79.3.206.62 ( talk) 17:05, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
Kepler had found that the distance between the planets increased in proportion to their distance from the Sun and his mystical mind led him to assume that the universe was created with a divine harmony and the size of the planets would increase in the same way. He had written in 1618 "Nothing is more in concord with nature than that the order of magnitude should be the the same as the order of the spheres". When Horrocks found that this was true of Venus and Mercury he tentatively proposed a law that said "All planets, (with the exception of Mars) are the same angular size, this being 28 arc seconds" This meant that the assumption his hero Kepler had made about the sizes of the planets held true and led to the erroneous conclusion that the distance between each planet and the Sun was about 15,000 times its radius. Thus he estimated the distance from the Earth to the Sun to be approximately 60 million miles (97 million km) – suggesting the solar system was ten times larger than traditionally believed.
Johnuniq ( talk) 11:26, 4 June 2012 (UTC)Perhaps Horrocks thought his unfounded law was reasonable given a veneration of Kepler, and the mystery of Kepler's third law (for which they had no explanation). If the cube of the planet–Sun distance was proportional to the square of the period of the planet's orbit, why should there not be a proportionality between the planet–Sun distance and the planet radius?
GA toolbox |
---|
Reviewing |
Reviewer: Adam Cuerden ( talk · contribs) 19:01, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
I think the major issue this has on a quick skim is Episode 13: Anonymous (24 November 2009). "An important anniversary in the history of science". The Renaissance Mathematics. wordpress.com. Retrieved 11 May 2012.
Can you state why this blog is acceptable under WP:RS? Adam Cuerden ( talk) 19:01, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
Reply Er - it's not. I've no idea why I put that one in, I mustn't have realised it was a blog. I've replaced it. Richerman (talk) 10:33, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
Right. I'm afraid this is going to be a fairly boring review beyond that point, then. This is an excellently-written, very competently-put-together article. Still, there are a few points.
General
Reply Hmm - I think some of those are a bit controversial - ,and, - that's at least one too many. Richerman (talk) 19:33, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
Background "suggesting that observations of a Venus transit would be more useful scientifically." - This reads, in context, as saying that observations of the Venus transit would be more useful than observations of a Mercury transit. I suspect you mean that the observations of the Mercury transit proving scientifically valuable indicated that the Venus transit would also be valuable, which isn't the same thing.
Reply No, it means that Mercury was too small to be useful for techniques such as the parallax method but I'll check up on that and clarify it. Richerman (talk) 19:33, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
William Crabtree
Reply I would translate it as 'We Keplarians' but I've never found a reference for it anywhere. I'll put that in and see if anyone objects later. Richerman (talk) 19:33, 28 August 2013 (UTC) Transit of Mercury
Reply That sounds reasonable to me. Richerman (talk) 19:33, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
I have a rule for promotion of these. If the problems are trivial and few, there's really no need to wait on them for promotion. This is an excellent article, and, whilst the... three points raised... should be fixed, I really don't think that's enough to block GA. Indeed, once they are fixed, I would consider this immediately ready to go to FAC. ✓ Pass. Adam Cuerden ( talk) 17:55, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
Comment Thanks for your review and the kind words. I was thinking of going to FAC with it but I'll need to standardise the citation style first. Then I'll have to make sure I have the time to deal with the flak :) Richerman (talk) 19:33, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. |
This article is rated GA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
1639 transit of Venus has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it. | ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the "
Did you know?" column on
June 5, 2012. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that the
transit of Venus of 1639, predicted by self-taught astronomer
Jeremiah Horrocks, was only seen and recorded by himself and his friend
William Crabtree? | ||||||||||
Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the " On this day..." column on December 4, 2015, December 4, 2017, December 4, 2020, and December 4, 2023. |
I added a few lines at the beginning of the "Results" section. His observation didn't really allow him to determine the distance (AU=astronomical unit). (It takes careful measurements, including timing, at two places far removed from each other, as was done in later observation campaigns.) It seems Horrocks was mainly interested in measuring the apparent size of Venus (as was his colleague Crabtree). He then used an assumption which it seems was more or less shared by some other contemporaries, that the sizes (diameters) of the planets were proportional to their distance from the sun. This then would of course allows to determine the actual distance of Venus (expressed in earth radii) and thus the AU. Thus this was more of a lucky guess, as Venus is only some rough 30% larger than what would be expected from the assumed "law". For the moment I don't have a better reference than: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2005A%26G....46a..14H
Greetings, 79.3.206.62 ( talk) 17:05, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
Kepler had found that the distance between the planets increased in proportion to their distance from the Sun and his mystical mind led him to assume that the universe was created with a divine harmony and the size of the planets would increase in the same way. He had written in 1618 "Nothing is more in concord with nature than that the order of magnitude should be the the same as the order of the spheres". When Horrocks found that this was true of Venus and Mercury he tentatively proposed a law that said "All planets, (with the exception of Mars) are the same angular size, this being 28 arc seconds" This meant that the assumption his hero Kepler had made about the sizes of the planets held true and led to the erroneous conclusion that the distance between each planet and the Sun was about 15,000 times its radius. Thus he estimated the distance from the Earth to the Sun to be approximately 60 million miles (97 million km) – suggesting the solar system was ten times larger than traditionally believed.
Johnuniq ( talk) 11:26, 4 June 2012 (UTC)Perhaps Horrocks thought his unfounded law was reasonable given a veneration of Kepler, and the mystery of Kepler's third law (for which they had no explanation). If the cube of the planet–Sun distance was proportional to the square of the period of the planet's orbit, why should there not be a proportionality between the planet–Sun distance and the planet radius?
GA toolbox |
---|
Reviewing |
Reviewer: Adam Cuerden ( talk · contribs) 19:01, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
I think the major issue this has on a quick skim is Episode 13: Anonymous (24 November 2009). "An important anniversary in the history of science". The Renaissance Mathematics. wordpress.com. Retrieved 11 May 2012.
Can you state why this blog is acceptable under WP:RS? Adam Cuerden ( talk) 19:01, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
Reply Er - it's not. I've no idea why I put that one in, I mustn't have realised it was a blog. I've replaced it. Richerman (talk) 10:33, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
Right. I'm afraid this is going to be a fairly boring review beyond that point, then. This is an excellently-written, very competently-put-together article. Still, there are a few points.
General
Reply Hmm - I think some of those are a bit controversial - ,and, - that's at least one too many. Richerman (talk) 19:33, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
Background "suggesting that observations of a Venus transit would be more useful scientifically." - This reads, in context, as saying that observations of the Venus transit would be more useful than observations of a Mercury transit. I suspect you mean that the observations of the Mercury transit proving scientifically valuable indicated that the Venus transit would also be valuable, which isn't the same thing.
Reply No, it means that Mercury was too small to be useful for techniques such as the parallax method but I'll check up on that and clarify it. Richerman (talk) 19:33, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
William Crabtree
Reply I would translate it as 'We Keplarians' but I've never found a reference for it anywhere. I'll put that in and see if anyone objects later. Richerman (talk) 19:33, 28 August 2013 (UTC) Transit of Mercury
Reply That sounds reasonable to me. Richerman (talk) 19:33, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
I have a rule for promotion of these. If the problems are trivial and few, there's really no need to wait on them for promotion. This is an excellent article, and, whilst the... three points raised... should be fixed, I really don't think that's enough to block GA. Indeed, once they are fixed, I would consider this immediately ready to go to FAC. ✓ Pass. Adam Cuerden ( talk) 17:55, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
Comment Thanks for your review and the kind words. I was thinking of going to FAC with it but I'll need to standardise the citation style first. Then I'll have to make sure I have the time to deal with the flak :) Richerman (talk) 19:33, 28 August 2013 (UTC)