Joseph Jérôme Lefrançois de Lalande was a French astronomer, freemason and writer.
François Félix Tisserand was a French astronomer.
Sir David Gill was a Scottish astronomer who is known for measuring astronomical distances, for astrophotography and geodesy. He spent much of his career in South Africa.
A transit of Venus takes place when Venus passes directly between the Sun and the Earth, becoming visible against the solar disk. During a transit, Venus is visible as a small black circle moving across the face of the Sun.
William Henry Finlay (FRAS) was a South African astronomer. He was First Assistant at the Cape Observatory from 1873 to 1898 under Edward James Stone. He discovered the periodic comet 15P/Finlay. Earlier, he was one of the first to spot the "Great Comet of 1882". The first telegraphic determinations of longitude along the western coast of Africa were made by Finlay and T. F. Pullen.
Louis Niesten (1844–1920) was a Belgian astronomer working at the Brussels Royal Observatory. In 1877 he observed Mars and created a detailed map of its surface features.
Jean-Charles Houzeau de Lehaie was a Belgian astronomer and journalist. A French speaker, he moved to New Orleans after getting in trouble for his politics in Belgium.
Luíz Cruls or Luís Cruls or Louis Ferdinand Cruls was a Belgian-Brazilian astronomer and geodesist. He was Director of the Brazilian National Observatory from 1881 to 1908, led the commission charged with the survey and selection of a future site for the capital of Brazil in the Central Plateau, and was co-discoverer of the Great Comet of 1882. Cruls was also an active proponent of efforts to accurately measure solar parallax and towards that end led a Brazilian team in their observations of 1882 Transit of Venus in Punta Arenas, Chile.
Silverton is a large village and civil parish, about 8 miles (13 km) north of Exeter, in the English county of Devon. It is one of the oldest villages in Devon and dates from the first years of the Saxon occupation.
Dom Alexandre Guy Pingré was a French canon regular, astronomer and naval geographer.
The Royal Observatory of Belgium has been situated in the Uccle municipality of Brussels since 1890. It is part of the institutions of the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO).
Pelham Aldrich was a Royal Navy officer and explorer, who became Admiral Superintendent of Portsmouth Docks.
The corbeta (corvette) ARA Uruguay, built in England, is the largest ship afloat of its age in the Armada de la República Argentina, with more than 140 years passed since its commissioning in September 1874. The last of the legendary squadron of President Sarmiento, the Uruguay took part in revolutions, ransoms, expeditions, rescues, and was even floating headquarters of the Navy School. During its operational history 1874–1926 the Uruguay has served as a gunboat, school ship, expedition support ship, Antarctic rescue ship, fisheries base supply ship, and hydrographic survey vessel, and is now a museum ship in Buenos Aires. The ship was built in 1874 at Laird Bros. shipyard of Birkenhead, England, at a cost of £32,000. This ship is rigged to a barque sailplan. The ship's steel hull is sheathed in teak.
Louis Thollon was a French astronomer.
The 1874 Transit of Venus Expedition to Hawaii was an astronomical expedition by British scientists to observe the December 8 transit of Venus at three separate observing sites in the Hawaiian Islands, then known as the Sandwich Islands. It was one of five 1874 transit expeditions organized by George Biddell Airy, Astronomer Royal at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. The purpose of the expedition was to obtain an accurate estimate of the astronomical unit (AU), the distance from the Earth to the Sun, by measuring solar parallax. Previous efforts to obtain a precise value of an AU in 1769 had been hampered by the black drop effect. There is a collection of papers relating to this expedition at the Cambridge Digital Library.
The 1874 transit of Venus, which took place on 9 December 1874, was the first of the pair of transits of Venus that took place in the 19th century, with the second transit occurring eight years later in 1882. The previous pair of transits had taken place in 1761 and 1769, and the next pair would not take place until 2004 and 2012. As with previous transits, the 1874 transit would provide an opportunity for improved measurements and observations. Numerous expeditions were planned and sent out to observe the transit from locations around the globe, with several countries setting up official committees to organise the planning.
Charles Émile Stuyvaert was a Belgian astronomer. He was a contemporary of Albert Lancaster, Louis Niesten and Jean-Charles Houzeau.
Passage de Vénus is a series of photographs of the transit of the planet Venus across the Sun on 9 December 1874. They were purportedly taken in Japan by the French astronomer Jules Janssen and Brazilian engineer Francisco Antônio de Almeida using Janssen's 'photographic revolver'.
The following lists events that happened during 1882 in the Kingdom of Belgium.
Jacques-André Mallet ; also Mallet-Favre; 23 September 1740 – 31 January 1790) was a Genevan mathematician and astronomer.
