Photograph
date: label: Date made
content: ca. 1882
notes: label: Description
content: In preparation for the 1874 and 1882 Transits of Venus across the face of the Sun, the U.S. Congress authorized a Commission to organize eight parties of astronomers, equip each party with identical apparatus, and send them to far-flung locations where there was a good chance of capturing these rare astronomical events. For photographic work, each American expedition was equipped with a heliostat that threw sunlight into a long-focus horizontal telescope, and then onto a glass photographic plate. This image of Venus passing in front of the Sun was taken with that equipment, probably in 1882.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2006.0182.01.02
label: catalog number
content: 2006.0182.01.02
label: accession number
content: 2006.0182
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Glass Plate (Photographic)
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall in box: 8 in x 8 in x 4 3/16 in; 20.32 cm x 20.32 cm x 10.63625 cm