Tag: Putnam Gallery

  • Nation & World

    The last dance between Venus and the sun

    Before 2004, the most recent Venus transit occurred more than a century ago, in 1882, and was used to compute the distance from the Earth to the sun. On June 5, 2012, another Venus transit will occur. Scientists with NASA’s Kepler mission hope to discover Earth-like planets outside our solar system by searching for transits…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    America’s first time zone

    The Harvard College Observatory built its foundation in the mid-1800s, after an epidemic of train wrecks prompted the railroads to seek a regional standard for greater accuracy and safety.

    6 minutes