150 years ago, Brazilians traveled 48 days to calculate the distance from the Earth to the Sun

Folha de S.Paulo

150 years ago, Brazilians traveled 48 days to calculate the distance from the Earth to the Sun

On December 9, 1874, in Nagasaki, Japan, where he arrived after a 48-day ship trip, the Rio de Janeiro astronomer and engineer Francisco Antonio de Almeida Júnior (1851-1928) described the rare passage of Venus before the Sun in this way: “At 10 hours and a few minutes we witnessed the triumphal entry of Venus into the solar regions, and it had already been more than a century since the beautiful goddess did not deign to allow mortals to witness…