1.
Transit of Venus
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A transit of Venus across the Sun takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and a superior planet, becoming visible against the solar disk. During a transit, Venus can be seen from Earth as a black disk moving across the face of the Sun. The duration of such transits is usually measured in hours, a transit is similar to a solar eclipse by the Moon. While the diameter of Venus is more than 3 times that of the Moon, Venus appears smaller, Transits of Venus are among the rarest of predictable astronomical phenomena. They occur in a pattern that repeats every 243 years. The periodicity is a reflection of the fact that the periods of Earth. The last transit of Venus was on 5 and 6 June 2012, and was the last Venus transit of the 21st century, the previous pair of transits were in December 1874 and December 1882. The next transits of Venus will be on 10–11 December 2117, Venus transits are historically of great scientific importance as they were used to gain the first realistic estimates of the size of the Solar System. Observations of the 1639 transit, combined with the principle of parallax, the 2012 transit provided scientists with a number of other research opportunities, particularly in the refinement of techniques to be used in the search for exoplanets. Venus, with an orbit inclined by 3. 4° relative to the Earths, although the inclination between these two orbital planes is only 3. 4°, Venus can be as far as 9. 6° from the Sun when viewed from the Earth at inferior conjunction. Since the angular diameter of the Sun is about half a degree, sequences of transits usually repeat every 243 years. After this period of time Venus and Earth have returned to nearly the same point in their respective orbits. During the Earths 243 sidereal orbital periods, which total 88,757.3 days, Venus completes 395 sidereal orbital periods of 224.701 days each and this period of time corresponds to 152 synodic periods of Venus. Prior to 1518, the pattern of transits was 8,113.5 and 121.5 years, the current pattern will continue until 2846, when it will be replaced by a pattern of 105.5,129.5 and 8 years. Thus, the 243-year cycle is relatively stable, but the number of transits, for instance, there is a series which ended in 541 BC, and the series which includes 2117 only started in AD1631. Ancient Indian, Greek, Egyptian, Babylonian and Chinese observers knew of Venus, the early Greek astronomers called Venus by two names—Hesperus the evening star and Phosphorus the morning star. Pythagoras is credited with realizing they were the same planet, there is no evidence that any of these cultures knew of the transits. Venus was important to ancient American civilizations, in particular for the Maya, who called it Noh Ek, the Great Star or Xux Ek, the Wasp Star, they embodied Venus in the form of the god Kukulkán
2.
Subantarctic
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The Subantarctic is a region in the southern hemisphere, located immediately north of the Antarctic region. This translates roughly to a latitude of between 46° – 60° south of the Equator, the subantarctic region includes many islands in the southern parts of the Indian Ocean, Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean, especially those situated north of the Antarctic Convergence. Subantarctic glaciers are, by definition, located on islands within the subantarctic region, all glaciers located on the continent of Antarctica are by definition considered to be Antarctic glaciers. The subantarctic region comprises two zones and three distinct fronts. The northernmost boundary of the region is the rather ill-defined Subtropical Front. To the south of the STF is a zone, the Subantarctic Zone. South of the SAZ is the Subantarctic Front, South of the SAF is another marine zone, called the Polar Frontal Zone. The SAZ and the PFZ together form the subantarctic region, the southernmost boundary of the PFZ is the Antarctic Convergence, located approximately 200 kilometers south of the Antarctic Polar Front. The ACC is the most important ocean current in the Southern Ocean, flowing eastward through the southern portions of the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, the ACC links these three otherwise separate oceanic basins. Extending from the sea surface to depths of 2000–4000 meters, and with a width of as great as 2000 kilometers, the ACC carries up to 150 Sverdrups, equivalent to 150 times the volume of water flowing in all the worlds rivers. The ACC and the global thermohaline circulation strongly influence regional and global climate as well as underwater biodiversity, the halothermal circulation is that portion of the global ocean circulation that is driven by global density gradients created by surface heat and evaporation. Several distinct water masses converge in the vicinity of the APF or Antarctic Convergence. This convergence creates an environment, noted for its very high marine productivity. Because of this, all lands and waters situated south of the Antarctic Convergence are considered to belong to the Antarctic from a climatological, biological and hydrological standpoint. However, the text of the Antarctic Treaty, article VI states, therefore, Antarctica is defined from a political standpoint as all land and ice shelves south of 60°S latitude. Because they are located far to the north of the Antarctic Convergence and have a temperate climate. The geography of islands is characterized by tundra, with some trees on Snares. These islands are all located near the Antarctic Convergence and are considered to be subantarctic islands
3.
Campbell Island, New Zealand
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Campbell Island / Motu Ihupuku is an uninhabited subantarctic island of New Zealand, and the main island of the Campbell Island group. It covers 112.68 square kilometres of the groups 113, the island is mountainous, rising to over 500 metres in the south. A long fjord, Perseverance Harbour, nearly bisects it, opening out to sea on the east coast, Campbell Island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Campbell Island was discovered in 1810 by Captain Frederick Hasselborough of the sealing brig Perseverance, Captain Hasselborough was drowned on 4 November 1810 in Perseverance Harbour. The island became a hunting base, and the seal population was almost totally eradicated. The first sealing boom was over by the mid-1810s, the second was a brief revival in the 1820s. The whaling boom extended here in the 1830s and ’40s, in 1874, the island was visited by a French scientific expedition intending to view the transit of Venus. Much of the topography is named after aspects of, or people connected with. In the late 19th century, the became a pastoral lease. Sheep farming was undertaken from 1896 until the lease, along with the sheep, in 1883 the American schooner Sarah W. Hunt, a whaler, was near Campbell Island. Twelve men in two small whaleboats headed for the island in terrible weather looking for seals, one of the boats disappeared, and the other boat with six men aboard managed to make it ashore. Sanford Miner, the captain of the Sarah W. Hunt, assumed all the whalers were lost, fortunately for the stranded whalers, a seal protection boat, the Kekeno, happened to arrive at the island, and rescued the castaways. The captains behavior caused an international scandal, in 1907, a group of scientists spent eight days on the island group surveying. The 1907 Sub-Antarctic Islands Scientific Expedition conducted a survey and also took botanical, zoological and geological specimens. During World War II, a station was operative at Tucker Cove at the north shore of Perseverance Harbour as part of the Cape Expedition program. After the war, the facilities were used as a station until the summer of 1957/58, when a new base was established at Beeman Cove. The new location provided improved exposure for the instruments, particularly wind recordings. The new meteorological station at Beeman Cove was operated by the New Zealand government with ten full-time staff
4.
Southern Ocean
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As such, it is regarded as the fourth-largest of the five principal oceanic divisions, smaller than the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans but larger than the Arctic Ocean. This ocean zone is cold, northward flowing waters from the Antarctic mix with warmer subantarctic waters. By way of his voyages in the 1770s, Captain James Cook proved that waters encompassed the southern latitudes of the globe. Since then, geographers have disagreed on the Southern Oceans northern boundary or even existence, considering the part of the Pacific, Atlantic. Others regard the seasonally-fluctuating Antarctic Convergence as the natural boundary, Borders and names for oceans and seas were internationally agreed when the International Hydrographic Bureau, the precusor to the IHO, convened the First International Conference on 24 July 1919. The IHO then published these in its Limits of Oceans and Seas, Australian authorities regard the Southern Ocean as lying immediately south of Australia. Map publishers using the term Southern Ocean on their maps include Hema Maps, Southern Ocean is an obsolete name for the Pacific Ocean or South Pacific, coined by Vasco Núñez de Balboa, the first European to discover it, who approached it from the north. The South Seas is an archaic synonym. A1745 British Act of Parliament established a prize for discovering a Northwest Passage to the Western and Southern Ocean of America, authors using Southern Ocean to name the waters encircling the unknown southern polar regions used varying limits. James Cooks account of his second voyage implies New Caledonia borders it, peacocks 1795 Geographical Dictionary said it lay to the southward of America and Africa, John Payne in 1796 used 40 degrees as the northern limit, the 1827 Edinburgh Gazetteer used 50 degrees. The United Kingdoms South Australia Act 1834 described the waters forming the southern limit of the new colony of South Australia as the Southern Ocean. The Colony of Victorias Legislative Council Act of 1881 delimited part of the division of Bairnsdale as along the New South Wales boundary to the Southern ocean. The limit then followed the west coast of Tasmania southwards to the South East Cape and then went eastwards to Broughton Island, New Zealand, the northern limits of the Southern Ocean were moved southwards in the IHOs 1937 second edition of the Limits of Oceans and Seas. From this edition, much of the northern limit ceased to abut land masses. As is discussed in detail below, prior to the 2002 edition the limits of oceans explicitly excluded the seas lying within each of them. The Great Australian Bight was unnamed in the 1928 edition, and it therefore encompassed former Southern Ocean waters but was technically not inside any of the three adjacent oceans by 1937. To perform direct comparisons of current and former limits of oceans it is necessary to consider, or at least be aware of, the limits of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans have therefore been extended South to the Antarctic Continent. The IHO readdressed the question of the Southern Ocean in a survey in 2000, of its 68 member nations,28 responded, and all responding members except Argentina agreed to redefine the ocean, reflecting the importance placed by oceanographers on ocean currents
5.
New Zealand
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New Zealand /njuːˈziːlənd/ is an island nation in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The country geographically comprises two main landmasses—the North Island, or Te Ika-a-Māui, and the South Island, or Te Waipounamu—and around 600 smaller islands. New Zealand is situated some 1,500 kilometres east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and roughly 1,000 kilometres south of the Pacific island areas of New Caledonia, Fiji, because of its remoteness, it was one of the last lands to be settled by humans. During its long period of isolation, New Zealand developed a distinct biodiversity of animal, fungal, the countrys varied topography and its sharp mountain peaks, such as the Southern Alps, owe much to the tectonic uplift of land and volcanic eruptions. New Zealands capital city is Wellington, while its most populous city is Auckland, sometime between 1250 and 1300 CE, Polynesians settled in the islands that later were named New Zealand and developed a distinctive Māori culture. In 1642, Dutch explorer Abel Tasman became the first European to sight New Zealand, in 1840, representatives of Britain and Māori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi, which declared British sovereignty over the islands. In 1841, New Zealand became a colony within the British Empire, today, the majority of New Zealands population of 4.7 million is of European descent, the indigenous Māori are the largest minority, followed by Asians and Pacific Islanders. Reflecting this, New Zealands culture is derived from Māori and early British settlers. The official languages are English, Māori and New Zealand Sign Language, New Zealand is a developed country and ranks highly in international comparisons of national performance, such as health, education, economic freedom and quality of life. Since the 1980s, New Zealand has transformed from an agrarian, Queen Elizabeth II is the countrys head of state and is represented by a governor-general. In addition, New Zealand is organised into 11 regional councils and 67 territorial authorities for local government purposes, the Realm of New Zealand also includes Tokelau, the Cook Islands and Niue, and the Ross Dependency, which is New Zealands territorial claim in Antarctica. New Zealand is a member of the United Nations, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Pacific Islands Forum, and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. Dutch explorer Abel Tasman sighted New Zealand in 1642 and called it Staten Landt, in 1645, Dutch cartographers renamed the land Nova Zeelandia after the Dutch province of Zeeland. British explorer James Cook subsequently anglicised the name to New Zealand, Aotearoa is the current Māori name for New Zealand. It is unknown whether Māori had a name for the country before the arrival of Europeans. Māori had several names for the two main islands, including Te Ika-a-Māui for the North Island and Te Waipounamu or Te Waka o Aoraki for the South Island. Early European maps labelled the islands North, Middle and South, in 1830, maps began to use North and South to distinguish the two largest islands and by 1907, this was the accepted norm. The New Zealand Geographic Board discovered in 2009 that the names of the North Island and South Island had never been formalised and this set the names as North Island or Te Ika-a-Māui, and South Island or Te Waipounamu
6.
French Academy of Sciences
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The French Academy of Sciences is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research. It was at the forefront of developments in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. Currently headed by Sébastien Candel, it is one of the five Academies of the Institut de France, the Academy of Sciences makes its origin to Colberts plan to create a general academy. He chose a group of scholars who met on 22 December 1666 in the Kings library. The first 30 years of the Academys existence were relatively informal, in contrast to its British counterpart, the Academy was founded as an organ of government. The Academy was expected to remain apolitical, and to avoid discussion of religious, on 20 January 1699, Louis XIV gave the Company its first rules. The Academy received the name of Royal Academy of Sciences and was installed in the Louvre in Paris, following this reform, the Academy began publishing a volume each year with information on all the work done by its members and obituaries for members who had died. This reform also codified the method by which members of the Academy could receive pensions for their work, on 8 August 1793, the National Convention abolished all the academies. Almost all the old members of the previously abolished Académie were formally re-elected, among the exceptions was Dominique, comte de Cassini, who refused to take his seat. In 1816, the again renamed Royal Academy of Sciences became autonomous, while forming part of the Institute of France, in the Second Republic, the name returned to Académie des sciences. During this period, the Academy was funded by and accountable to the Ministry of Public Instruction, the Academy came to control French patent laws in the course of the eighteenth century, acting as the liaison of artisans knowledge to the public domain. As a result, academicians dominated technological activities in France, the Academy proceedings were published under the name Comptes rendus de lAcadémie des sciences. The Comptes rendus is now a series with seven titles. The publications can be found on site of the French National Library, in 1818 the French Academy of Sciences launched a competition to explain the properties of light. The civil engineer Augustin-Jean Fresnel entered this competition by submitting a new theory of light. Siméon Denis Poisson, one of the members of the judging committee, being a supporter of the particle-theory of light, he looked for a way to disprove it. The Poisson spot is not easily observed in every-day situations, so it was natural for Poisson to interpret it as an absurd result. However, the head of the committee, Dominique-François-Jean Arago, and he molded a 2-mm metallic disk to a glass plate with wax
7.
Hydrography
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The origins of hydrography lay in the making of charts to aid navigation, by individual mariners as they navigated into new waters. These were usually the property, even closely held secrets. National organizations, particularly navies, realized that the collection, systematization and distribution of this gave it great organizational. Thus were born dedicated national hydrographic organizations for the collection, organization, publication and distribution of hydrography incorporated into charts, prior to the establishment of the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office, Royal Navy captains were responsible for the provision of their own charts. In practice this meant that ships often sailed with inadequate information for safe navigation, and that when new areas were surveyed, the Admiralty appointed Alexander Dalrymple as Hydrographer in 1795, with a remit to gather and distribute charts to HM Ships. Within a year existing charts from the two centuries had been collated, and the first catalogue published. The first chart produced under the direction of the Admiralty, was a chart of Quiberon Bay in Brittany, under Captain Thomas Hurd the department received its first professional guidelines and the first catalogues were published and made available to the public and to other nations as well. In 1829, Rear-Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort, as Hydrographer, developed the eponymous Scale, and introduced the first official tide tables in 1833, the word hydrography comes from the Ancient Greek ὕδωρ, water and γράφω, to write. The science of oceanography is, in part, an outgrowth of classical hydrography, in many respects the data are interchangeable, but marine hydrographic data will be particularly directed toward marine navigation and safety of that navigation. Marine resource exploration and exploitation is a significant application of hydrography, hydrographical measurements include the tidal, current and wave information of physical oceanography. Bottom measurements also include collection of the nature of the bottom as it pertains to effective anchoring, unlike oceanography, hydrography will include shore features, natural and manmade, that aid in navigation. Hydrography, mostly for reasons of safety, adopted a number of conventions that have affected its portrayal of the data on nautical charts, the former are the mariners tools to avoid accident. The latter are best representations of the seabed, as in a topographic map, for scientific. Trends in hydrographic practice since c, 2003–2005 have led to a narrowing of this difference, with many more hydrographic offices maintaining best observed databases, and then making navigationally safe products as required. This has been coupled with a preference for multi-use surveys, so that the data collected for nautical charting purposes can also be used for bathymetric portrayal. For instance, if there is an area that can not be reached because it is surrounded by shallow water. The color filled areas that show different ranges of water are not the equivalent of contours on a topographic map since they are often drawn seaward of the actual shallowest depth portrayed. A bathymetric chart does show marine topology accurately, details covering the above limitations can be found in Part 1 of Bowditchs American Practical Navigator
8.
Natural history
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Natural history is the research and study of organisms including animals, fungi and plants in their environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. It encompasses scientific research but is not limited to it, with articles nowadays more often published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the sciences, natural history is the systematic study of any category of natural objects or organisms. That is a broad designation in a world filled with many narrowly focused disciplines. For example, geobiology has a strong multi-disciplinary nature combining scientists, a person who studies natural history is known as a naturalist or natural historian. The English term natural history is a translation of the Latin historia naturalis and its meaning has narrowed progressively with time, while the meaning of the related term nature has widened. In antiquity, it covered essentially anything connected with nature or which used materials drawn from nature. For example, Pliny the Elders encyclopedia of this title, published circa 77 to 79 AD, covers astronomy, geography, man and his technology, medicine and superstition as well as animals and plants. Medieval European academics considered knowledge to have two divisions, the humanities and divinity, with science studied largely through texts rather than observation or experiment. In modern terms, natural philosophy roughly corresponded to modern physics and chemistry, natural history had been encouraged by practical motives, such as Linnaeus aspiration to improve the economic condition of Sweden. Similarly, the Industrial Revolution prompted the development of geology to help find useful mineral deposits, the astronomer, William Herschel was also a natural historian. Instead of working with plants or minerals he worked with the stars and he spent his time building telescopes to see the stars and the rest of the time watching the stars. In the beginning, he believed there to be a known as a nebulae. Herschel can be considered a natural historian because he observed the natural world, in the process he made charts of all the stars and kept records of all that he saw. S. Wilcove and T. Eisner, The close observation of organisms—their origins, their evolution, their behavior and it encompasses changes in internal states insofar as they pertain to what organisms do. Some definitions go further, focusing on observation of organisms in their environment. Bartholomew, A student of history, or a naturalist, studies the world by observing plants. A common thread in many definitions of natural history is the inclusion of a component, as seen in a recent definition by H. W. Greene
9.
Henri Filhol
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Henri Filhol was a French medical doctor, malacologist and naturalist born in Toulouse. He was the son of Édouard Filhol, curator of the Museum of Toulouse, after receiving his early education in Toulouse, he moved to Paris, where he obtained doctorates in medicine and science. In 1879 he was appointed professor of zoology at the Faculty of Toulouse, from 1894 to 1902 he occupied the chair of comparative animal anatomy at the Muséum national dHistoire naturelle in Paris. In 1897 he became a member of the Académie des sciences, in the field of paleontology, he performed important studies of fossilized mammals in the phosphorites in Quercy. He served as the doctor and naturalist on the French 1874 Transit of Venus expedition to Campbell Island, New Zealand, with a peak on the island, Filhol Peak. In 1883 with Alphonse Milne-Edwards, Léon Vaillant, Edmond Perrier and others, he embarked on a scientific journey aboard the Talisman
