Abstract
SHORT'S OBSERVATION OF A SUPPOSED SATELLITE OF VENUS.—This observation which, as it appears in the Philosophical Transactions, vol. xli. (NATURE, vol. xiv., p. 194), is mystified by a typographical error, is also found in “Histoire de l'Academie des Sciences, 1741,” p. 125, where the micrornetrically-measured distance of the suspicious object from Venus is given in what seems to be a more correct form, and as it was used by Lambert in his calculations. After referring to the observations of the elder Cassini in 1672 and 1686, the writer—probably Cassini II., author of “Elemens d'Astronomie”—states that Mr. Short had again seen the satellite, real or apparent, in the preceding year (1740), under similar circumstances, and with the same phase as Cassini had described; he had been informed of this in January, 1741, by M. Coste, “auteur de la Traduction du livre de l'Entendement Humain de Locke, et de plusieurs autres ouvrages;” and having communicated the observation to the Academy of Sciences, had been charged by that body to inquire more particularly concerning it, and report the result. But as Short had not seen the satellite again up to June, 1741, nothing further was ascertained than had been notified in the letter addressed to M. Coste, which was from “Mr. Turner, written from London, June 8.”
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Our Astronomical Column . Nature 14, 231–232 (1876). https://doi.org/10.1038/014231f0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/014231f0