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Hardly Deceived (By The Ghost Of Venus)

from Bookshelf Explorer by moonwobble

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Before dawn on October 23, 1740, James Short, an
expert optician and a Fellow of the Royal Society, was
watching the sky:

Directing a reflecting telescope of 16.5 inches
focus.. . towards Venus, I perceived a small star
pretty nigh her; upon which I took another telescope
of the same focal distance, which magnified about
fifty or sixty times.... Finding Venus very distinct,
and consequently the air very clear, I put on a
magnifying power of 240 times, and to my great
surprise found this star put on the same phasis with
Venus [that is, it showed the same phase or pattern
of sunlight and shadow, indicating that it was near
Venus rather than a distant star].... Its diameter
seemed about a third, or somewhat less, of the
diameter of Venus; its light was not so bright or
vivid, but exceeding sharp and well defined.... I
saw it for the space of an hour several times that
morning; but the light of the sun increasing, I lost it
altogether about a quarter of an hour after eight. I
have looked for it every clear morning since, but
never had the good fortune to see it again.

Short was a premier telescope maker and would
hardly have been deceived by a “ghost Venus”—an
internal reflection within the eyepiece—as some have
suggested. Others who saw an apparent satellite of
Venus included Gian Domenico Cassini, the discoverer
of four of Saturn’s moons, in 1672 and 1686; Andreas
Meier in 1759; T. W. Webb in 1823; and M. Stuyvanert
in 1884. Today there is no trace of any satellite of Venus.
(Nature, 14:193-94, June 29, 1876)

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from Bookshelf Explorer, released March 5, 2019

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moonwobble Second, West Virginia

ADRIFT IN
DEEP SPACE.

SURROUNDED BY
VOID AND LIGHT.

EXPLORING THE
PRISMATIC HEART.

84% of these tracks
were recorded on the fly,
while fishing the stream of consciousness.

From dark matter,
to grey. ... more

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