Date: 10 June 2004
Subject: Astronomy

This editorial has been delayed to take in an event on June 8th which no one now alive had previously seen, and which no one alive will see again from this island. I was privileged to see it from the exact place where it was first observed on November 24th 1639 by the 22 year old genius Jeremiah Horrocks.

Horrocks came from Puritan stock, and was himself a devout man who saw his astronomical work as an exploration of God’s work. He went up to Cambridge in 1632 in days when there was no professor of Astronomy there, and no one to teach him any of the "modern" stuff about it. The "modern" stuff was the work of Johannes Kepler (who had died in 1630 after publishing the correct elliptical orbits for the planets in 1609 and 1619), and Galileo was about to get into a spot of bother with the Inquisition. The early 1630’s are an interesting time for the science and religion issues. In Italy, Galileo;s troubles arose from the publication of his Dialogue with its ill advised jibe at his old friend the Pope and its attempts (as a lay person) to redo the theology. In Northern Europe, however, the devout Lutheran and open Copernican Johannes Kepler had received continuous protection from powerful Catholics (even throughout the 30 years war) and been employed by three successive increasingly fanatical Catholic Holy Roman Emperors. In Britain, the Puritan Horrocks is not even aware that there might be a religious issue with the moving earth – the Puritans simply did not think that their religious creed dealt with such scientific issues.

Horrocks was from a comfortable artisan but not a wealthy background (his dad was a watchmaker), and he could not afford tutors (even if there were any). Young Jeremiah (perhaps 13-14 years old when he went up – which was fairly common in those days) decided to teach himself. He had no real "official" encouragement, but eventually found a couple of friends (particularly William Crabtree who was about 7 years his senior) who shared his interest. Kepler had correctly predicted that in 1631 the planet Venus would "transit" ie come between the earth and the sun, but unfortunately this was not visible from Europe. What he had missed, and young Jeremiah worked out, was that Venus would transit again in 1639, this time visible from Europe.

This is how he reports the actual observation:

"I watched carefully on the 24th from sunrise to nine o’clock, and from a little before ten until noon, and at one in the afternoon, being called away in the intervals by business of the highest importance which, for these ornamental pursuits, I could not with propriety neglect. But during all this time I saw nothing in the sun except a small and common spot… This evidently had nothing to do with Venus. About fifteen minutes past three in the afternoon, when I was again at liberty to continue my labours, the clouds, as if by divine interposition, were entirely dispersed, and I was once more invited to the grateful task of repeating my observations. I then beheld a most agreeable spectacle, the object of my sanguine wishes, a spot of unusual magnitude and of a perfectly circular shape, which had already fully centred upon the sun’s disc on the left, so that the limbs of the Sun and Venus precisely coincided, forming an angle of contact. Not doubting that this was really the shadow of the planet, I immediately applied myself sedulously to observe it."

Horrocks died suddenly and unexpectedly in 1641, and had he lived the same length of time as Newton he might well have been just as famous.

Horrocks is a part of that true history of the interaction of Christian faith and science, which has almost always been positive. It did not even occur to him that there might be some kind of conflict. Horrocks actually pushed up the estimated distance of the sun to 60 million miles, but neither this nor the sun’s motion struck him as any problem at all for his theology.

Just after "first contact" (when the disc of Venus first hits the sun’s edge), the skies in Much Hoole cleared "as if by divine interposition", and I (and the international group of astronomers who had gathered to see the event) were able to see "second contact" (when Venus is just inside the sun). It still seems amazing that we can predict so accurately the interposition of a body 31 million miles away between us and one 93 million miles away. So predictable is our universe – even though actually we cannot push the planetary predictions indefinitely into the future with unlimited accuracy. Most of us who saw it had – even the non-religious ones – a certain sense of awe. We were very blessed, given that it rained the day before and the day after.

Did you miss it? Well the bad news is that if you want to see it then you need to go to the antipodes in eight years time – otherwise your only hope is to live another 120 years until the next one!