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Article: Astronomy
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
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ASTRONOMY
ASTRONOMY.
Colonial Americans lacked instruments and libraries. They had difficulty communicating with each other and often relied on English correspondents for news of other colonialists. During the seventeenth century, European astronomy was focused on extending Isaac Newton's mathematical description of the solar system, and a few Americans contributed their observations to the Royal Society of London. American observations served European theories.
When Venus passed in front of the sun in 1761 and 1769, transits revealed the distance of the earth from the sun. John Winthrop, professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Harvard, organized an expedition to ...