. Annual report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. Smithsonian Institution; Smithsonian Institution. Archives; Discoveries in science. ON ASTRONOMY. 123 From the transit of lYOl he finds P =: 8".53 From the transit of 1769 he finds P = 8".GO Mean P = 8".57 The sun's distance is therefore very nearly 95,300,000 miles. From this all the other planetary distances are easily obtained by Kepler's Third Law. Airy, in^his Lectures on Astronomy, puts the distance at 95,500,000, with a probable error of not more than 500,000 miles. It is worthy of remark, as showing
. Annual report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. Smithsonian Institution; Smithsonian Institution. Archives; Discoveries in science. ON ASTRONOMY. 123 From the transit of lYOl he finds P =: 8".53 From the transit of 1769 he finds P = 8".GO Mean P = 8".57 The sun's distance is therefore very nearly 95,300,000 miles. From this all the other planetary distances are easily obtained by Kepler's Third Law. Airy, in^his Lectures on Astronomy, puts the distance at 95,500,000, with a probable error of not more than 500,000 miles. It is worthy of remark, as showing that all true methods are in harmony with each other, that Professor Burg, in 1824, following the footsteps of Mayer, deduced the solar parallax from analytical in- vestigations of the Lunar Theory, and found for a result 8".62, very nearly coincident with that of Encke. Laplace had obtained, in the same way, 8". 61, a result almost identical with that of Burg. These remarkable coincidences of analysis with observation in the remote and untrodden fields of science furnish, as Laplace suggests, one of the most striking proofs of universal gravitation. • Before bringing these remarks to a close, I must call your attention to one other effort to approximate still nearer to this i'undamental element in the solar system, an effort recommended by the ablest astronomers, at home and abroad, and deemed worthy of the combined labor of different countries. I refer to the United States naval astro- nomical expedition to the southern hemisphere during the years 1849, 1850, 1851, and 1852, under Lieutenant J. M. Gilliss. In 1847 Dr. Gerling, a distinguished astronomer and mathema- tician of Marburg, in Germany, called the attention of astronomers to the importance of repeating the observation on Mars in opposition, and especially of making observations on Venus during the inferior conjunction, for the more exact determination of the sun's parallax. Pie suggested reasons for beli
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