The Yale Heliometer manufactured by Repsold in 1882 for viewing Transit of Venus in December 1882.

Object notes   Associations

The Yale heliometer arrived from the Repsold workshop in May 1882 just in time for the December transit of Venus. The heliometer was installed in the west tower of the newly built Winchester Observatory at Yale. An extensive description of the heliometer including this image was published in Science, vol 1, no. 4 (Mar 2 1883) pp 91-94. The description was written by Leonard Waldo who was chief astronomer at Yale. The heliometer had an aperture of 155mm and a focal length of 2,495mm. The split object glass was made by Merz in Munich. After the transit of Venus the heliometer was primarily used for the study of stellar parallaxes. Only the split objective is all that remains of the original heliometer today.

Web links

• Brief history of the Yale Department of Astronomy

Related Objects

• Eight inch refractor made by Grubb and purchased by Yale in 1882 to view transit of Venus

Source

Object contributed by Peabody Museum of Natural History