NavList:

Some thoughts on the future, written long ago:
"Transits of Venus usually occur in pairs; the two transits of a pair being separated by only eight years, but between the nearest transits of consecutive pairs more than a century elapses. We are now on the eve of the second transit of a pair, after which there will be no other till the twenty-first century of our era has dawned upon the earth, and the June flowers are blooming in 2004. When the last transit season occurred the intellectual world was awakening from the slumber of ages, and that wondrous scientific activity which has led to our present advanced knowledge was just beginning. What will be the state of science when the next transit season arrives God only knows. Not even our children's children will live to take part in the astronomy of that day. As for ourselves, we have to do with the present..."

That was written by William Harkness, astronomer at the US Naval Observatory in 1882 (from the Proceedings of the AAAS).

I also like his concluding paragraph:
"In 1716, Halley thought that by the application of his method to the transit of 1761, the solar parallax could certainly be determined within the five hundredth part of its whole amount. Since then, three transits have come and gone, and the contact methods have failed to give half that accuracy. From the photographic method, as developed by the U. S. Transit of Venus Commission, we hope better things, and perhaps fifty years hence its results may be regarded as the most valuable of the present transit season. In 1874, as in 1761, exaggerated views prevailed respecting the value of transits of Venus, but no competent authority now supposes that the solar parallax can be settled by them alone. The masses of the Earth and Moon, the moon's parallactic inequality, the lunar equation of the earth, the constants of nutation and aberration, the velocity of light, and the light equation, must all be taken into account in determining the solar parallax, and it cannot be regarded as exactly known until the results obtained from trigonometrical, gravitational, and phototachymetrical, methods are in perfect harmony. It may be many years before this is attained, but meanwhile practical astronomy is not suffering. Its use of the solar parallax is mainly confined to the reduction of observations made at the surface of the earth to what they would have been if made at the Earth's centre; and for that, our present knowledge suffices. The real argument for expending so much money upon transits of Venus is that being an important factor in determining the solar parallax, their extreme rarity renders it unpardonable to neglect any opportunity of observing them. Let us do our whole duty in this matter that posterity may benefit by it, even as we have benefited by the labors of our predecessors."

-FER

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