6°) Further reading

BLAMONT, Jacques, Vénus dévoilée- voyage autour d’une planète, Odile Jacob, 1987. (Initiator of French spatial politics, Jacques Blamont describes his research during his time as head of the Centre National d’Études Spatiales. He dedicates a whole chapter to transits of Venus in the eighteenth century.)

DODRAY, Gilles, Des images pour mesurer la parallaxe de Vénus ou de Mercure, in L’Astronomie, Bulletin de la Société Astronomique de France n° 117, March-April 2003. (Gilles Dodray, a mathematics teacher in a High School, relates in detail his exploratory projects in preparations with his astronomy club preparing for the transit of Mercury of 7 May 2003. He is also the author of Arpenter l’univers – une méthode d’astronomie expérimentale (Vuibert, July 2003), in which he describes his experiments for measuring heavenly objects with pupils.)

LUMINET, Jean-Pierre, Le Rendez-Vous de Vénus, J.-C. Lattès, 1999. (In this novel, Jean-Pierre Luminet describes the tribulations of Le Gentil de La Galaisière, Pingré and Chappe d’Auteroche during the transits of Venus in the eighteenth century.)

MAOR, Eli, June 8 2004: Venus in Transit, Princeton University Press, 2000 (a readable introduction to the meaning and history of transits and a look forward to the 2004 transit)

MOORE, Patrick and MAUNDER, Michael, Transit: When Planets Cross the Sun, Springer, 2000 (Mainly aimed at the practicalities of observing and photographing transits, but includes a substantial account of past transits)

SELLERS, David, The Transit of Venus, The quest to find the true distance of the Sun, Magavelda Press, 2001. (Tells the story of attempts to measure the distance of the Sun - from earliest times to the age of radar. The crucial role of the transit of Venus is described in detail. Woven into the story is an explanation of each of the key pieces of evidence, which allows us to say that we truly know the distance of the Sun)

SIMAAN, Arkan, La science au péril de sa vie – les aventuriers de la mesure du monde,Vuibert/Adapt, 2001. (Special astronomy book prize (2002). Description of scientific expeditions during the eighteenth century to measure and determine the shape of the Earth (1735-1743), observe the transits of Venus (in 1761 and 1769) and establish the metric system during the French Revolution.)

SIMAAN, Arkan (Editor), Vénus devant le Soleil – comprendre et observer un phénomène astronomique, Vuibert/Adapt, 2003. (co-authored by Jacques Blamont, Guillaume Cannat, Yves Délaye, Michel Laudon, Jean-Pierre Luminet, Steven M. van Roode, David Sellers and Arkan Simaan this book analyses previous transits of Venus, gives advice on how to succeed in the 2004 observations, and to ensure exact timing during the transit, provides a bibliography with commentary and a selection of historic documents. It also contains educational information on the calculations of distances in the solar system, from Antiquity to the transit of Venus. All mathematical calculations are at pupils’ level of understanding.)