Bureau des Longitudes and the foundation of the La Platas observatory

RIEZNIK MARINA

Nancy

Conferencia; Séminaire dans le cadre du projet Bureau des Longitudes 1795-1932; 2016

Université de Lorraine

In 1882, in Argentina, the governor of Buenos Aires province and members of France?s Bureau of Longitudes fostered one of the international missions that were observing the transit of Venus across the sun. The instruments they used would serve in the founding of an observatory in La Plata. In this talk I stress the interrelationships between the foundation of that observatory and the popular spreading of news about the transit of Venus. The interest is to get into the historical construction of the assumption that claims that there is a clear limit between amateur records and scientific registry. Also we will show that the competitions between observatories were involved in the construction of that limit.