Venus in India: the transit tales

Abstract

This work is about sightings and astronomical observations of transits of Venus across the disk of the Sun made from the Indian region. The sources of the information presented here range from some classic texts and historiographies, publications and records of institutions and chronicles to accounts by some individuals. Of particular interest is the 1761 transit, observed from top of the Governor’s house, Fort St George, Madras by the Rev. William Hirst who made a significant observation – of having seen at the moments of ingress a nebulosity about the planet. That in fact is the discovery of atmosphere of Venus, duly recorded in his communication as presented in the Vol. 52 of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. The discovery of atmosphere of Venus has been attributed to Mikhail Lomonosov alone that he made during the same transit observed from the St. Petersburg Observatory.