Thursday, October 13, 2011

Jeremiah Horrocks, Biography


Kyle Violette
Mr. Percival
Astronomy Honors, Period 1
14 Oct. 2011

Biography quarter one: Jeremiah Horrocks

            Jeremiah Horrocks was born in 1618 in Lower Lodge, Liverpool to a father who was small farmer and a mother whose occupation is unknown. He lived a brief life and died on January 3rd, 1641. During his life time he was a rather poor boy but he entered Emmanuel College in 1632 and later was added to the list of students attending Cambridge as a student with assisted living. Sadly, due to the cost of continuing his studies, he left both colleges in late 1635. It has been generally accepted that Horrocks supported himself after college by becoming a tutor for a wealthy family, the Stones family, and taught lower grade education to the stone children.

            Horrocks was not originally interested astronomy but during his short stay at Cambridge he learned of the advances made by Brahe and Kepler. He read about the discoveries made by some of the much better known astronomers and found certain flaws within some of their research. By 17, Horrocks was suggesting how to correct the faults within certain papers published by others and even started doing research of his own. The first thing Horrocks tried to prove was that the moon moved in an elliptical path around earth. Later, he even attempted to prove that the tides were in fact caused by the moon, but did not know what force the moon could be using to cause the tides. Although he alone did not prove his theories, they were later supported by Newton with his suggestion of gravity and how the gravities of the Earth, the Moon and the Sun interacted. Overall, it were the actions like this that made Horrocks a key piece in connecting the best known works of the most famous astronomers together into one cohesive unit.

            Finally, in 1639, Jeremiah Horrocks put himself on the list of notable astronomer by observing the transit of Venus across the sun. Horrocks was the only person in the known world that predicted when Venus would cross in front of the sun and was one of two people who actually observed the cross, the other person being William Crabtree, a friend of his who was informed of Horrocks prediction. Horrocks was able to make this immense observation because he had been taking data on Venus for many years and believed an earlier made table of data, Lansberg’s table, was inaccurate. The Lansberg table predicted a near miss transit of Venus in 1639 while Horrocks believed it would occur. Horrocks observed the transit on November 24, 1939 Julian calendar, December 4th Gregorian calendar, and was able to observe it from 3:15 to 3:45. With this event now observed, Horrocks was able to make a well informed guess as to the size of Venus and make a much more accurate guess as to how far the planet was away from the sun. Horrocks predicted the plant was 59 million miles away while in reality it was 93 million miles away, but, this was a far more accurate prediction than what was previously though.

            Sadly, in 1640 Horrocks returned to his home town in Toxteth Park and on January 3rd, 1641, Horrocks suddenly died at age 22. He was considered to be a blooming young astronomer and, as his friend Crabtree out it, his death was “an incalculable loss!”  

 


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