Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.15525

    Transit of Mercury

    Date
    31 October 1690
    Creator
    Unknown, Artist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p1
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 312mm
    width (page): 198mm
    Subject
    Content object
    space
       > Solar system
          > planet
             > Mercury
    space
       > Solar system
          > Sun
    Description
    Transit of mercury observed by Johann Philipp von Wurzelbau (1651-1725) on 31 October 1690 in Nuremberg. Wurzelbau's letter to Edmond Halley was read to a meeting of the Royal Society on 4 February 1691. The observation, without the figure, was printed in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. 16, no. 192 (1691).
    Transcription
    Ratio diametrorum Solis et nuclei Mercurii dum lucido solis disco immorabatur,,,
    Transcribed by the Making Visible project
    Object history
    4 February 1691, 'There was read an account of the Appearance of Mercury in the Sun observed at Nurenburgh by Mr Wurtzelbauer: viz that He went out of the Sun on the N.W. limb at 8.25 at Nurenburg id est Londini 7 hr 41, 14, sooner than it had been produced by a calculus. Halley having formerly observed the like appearance of this Planet in the Sun was ordered to bring in the next day some account of that Phaenomenon in Generall' (JBO/9/29).

    Printed without the figure in Johann Philipp von Wurzelbau, 'Observatio Mercurii sub sole visi, ultimo Octobris 1690. Stil. vet. Habita Noribergae’, Phil. Trans., vol. 16, no. 192 (1691), pp. 483-85.
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > Germany
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