From the Earth to the Sun: the quest for the Astronomical Unit by means of the 1761 and 1769 Venus transits.

• Main Author: Lovisetti, Luisa
• Other Authors: Focardi, Paola
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: unknown
• Published: Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna 2021
• Subjects: Venus transit,Astronomical Unit,solar parallax,history,eighteenth century,astronomy,international,collaboration; Physics [LM-DM270]; Venus; Newfoundland; Siberia
• Online Access: http://amslaurea.unibo.it/23504/

In the mid-eighteenth century, the primary and most urgent astronomical problem was to determine the exact value of the Earth-Sun distance (the so-called Astronomical Unit, A.U.). With that value in hand, thanks to Kepler’s third law, all the planet distances would have been easily derived and, as a...