In 1639 Jeremiah Horrocks (1618-41) discovered that despite what the planetary tables of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler predicted there would be a transit of Venus on November 24 that year. Aside from proving the previous tables wrong the event showed that despite Tycho Brahe's postulation, the planets are not self-luminous objects. Despite his groundbreaking discoveries Horrocks was largely forgotten until the publication of two treatises in 1662. The transit of Venus was described in Venus in sole vista where Horrocks had jotted down a brief occasional poem. I will post it here in commemoration of Jeremiah Horrocks and his importance in the history of astronomy.
- Thy return
- Posterity shall witness; years must roll
- Away, but then at length the splendid sight
- Again shall greet our distant children's eyes.