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Jeremiah Horrocks was born at Lower Lodge Farm in Toxteth Park, a former royal deer park near Liverpool, Lancashire. [5] His father James had moved to Toxteth Park to be apprenticed to Thomas Aspinwall, a watchmaker, and subsequently married his master's daughter Mary.
Jeremiah Horrocks (1618 – 3 January 1641) [3] was born in Lower Lodge, Toxteth Park – now part of Liverpool but at that time a separate town. His father James was a watchmaker, and his mother Mary Aspinwall was from a notable Toxteth Park family. [6]
It is commonly said that Jeremiah Horrocks made his observation of the transit of Venus, 24 Nov. 1639, from the room above the porch while living at Carr House as the guest and lodger of Mr. Stone. [6] [7] It is also believed that Jeremiah Horrocks was the tutor to the Stone family's children.
Crabtree corresponded with Jeremiah Horrocks, another enthusiastic amateur astronomer, from 1636. A group of astronomers from the north of England, which included William Gascoigne, formed around them and were Britain's first followers of the astronomy of Johannes Kepler.
The first such transit to be predicted and observed was the Transit of Venus, 1639, seen and recorded by English astronomers Jeremiah Horrocks and William Crabtree.
Jeremiah Horrocks (1618–1641), English astronomer; John Horrocks (cotton manufacturer) (1768–1804), British cotton manufacturer; John Horrocks (fisherman) (1816–1881), Scottish founder and innovator of modern European fly fishing; John Ainsworth Horrocks, (1818–1846), English-born explorer and settler in South Australia
A notable success was achieved by Jeremiah Horrocks, who proposed a scheme involving an approximate 6 monthly libration in the position of the lunar apogee and also in the size of the elliptical eccentricity. This scheme had the great merit of giving a more realistic description of the changes in distance, diameter and parallax of the Moon.
The breakthrough came in 1639 when Jeremiah Horrocks made the first scientific observation of a transit of Venus and used his results to estimate an approximation for the AU. [5] [6] A second method, proposed in 1663 by the Scottish mathematician James Gregory, [7] was promoted by Edmond Halley in a paper published in 1691 (revised 1716). [8]