Page - 183 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

183The North Beckons Lapland)—both of which lay, as he must have been well aware, within the con- fines of the Danish–Norwegian kingdom. Maskelyne’s letter was written after the Royal Society of London, at a meeting on November 19, 1767, had singled out Vardø and North Cape as possible sites for British Venus transit observa- tions, “unless it was learned that Swedish or Danish astronomers were plan- ning to make use of these stations.”35 The letter to Wargentin reveals that the Royal Society had no idea about the prospective expedition by Hell at this stage. What is more, Maskelyne apparently had such low faith in the abilities of Danish astronomers that he found it futile to encourage them to make observa- tions from these important stations. This explains why he insisted that the Swedes should go to northern Norway to make Venus transit observations in 1769, instead of the Danes: The Royal Society wishes strongly that the coming transit of Venus through the disc of the Sun be observed correctly and in the places neces- sary for computation of the solar parallax. Accordingly, it is likely that it will dispatch observers to regions overseas, but in the meantime, it wish- es to know in what places the Swedish observers will conduct their obser- vations […]. Suitable places for observing the transit of Venus in your country or not far away from it, are Torneå, Kittis, Vardøhus, and the northern Cape of Lapland [i.e., the North Cape]. In these places, the du- ration of the transit will extend eleven or twelve minutes in time because of the parallaxes. The last of the places mentioned—that is, the extreme Cape of Lapland—fits perfectly well for this observation, since there the altitude of the Sun will rise to eight or nine degrees during both interior contacts, which is higher than in any of the other places; although it will not be considerably lower in Vardøhus, the altitude of the Sun will in Kit- tis hardly be any higher than five degrees, and in Torneå, hardly higher than four and a half. If only Swedish astronomers would take upon them- selves to make observations in all these places! Most of all, however, I sincerely wish that either You, most learned and well experienced man, 35 Woolf, Transits of Venus, 164. Among English astronomers, Halley had already pointed to “the northernmost parts of Norway” as an ideal place for observations because of the midnight sun in the Philosophical Transactions for the year 1716. Halley, “Methodus singu- laris,” 464. Then, “Wardhuys” or “Wardhus” was specifically mentioned in similar papers from the mid-1760s by a later generation of fellows of the Royal Society. See James Fergu- son, “A Delineation of the Transit of Venus Expected in the Year 1769 […], Read Feb. 10, 1763,” ptrsl 53 (1763; published 1764): 30; Thomas Hornsby, “On the Transit of Venus in 1769 […] Read Feb. 13, 1766,” ptrsl 55 (1765; published 1766): 326–24. Hornsby’s paper was also translated into German and published in the Neues Hamburgisches Magazin in 1767.