Empirical Earth · The Sky — Sun, Moon & Stars

The 1794 “star in the dark part of the Moon” — what Wilkins reported

The claim

“A star was seen through the Moon in 1794 and the Royal Society printed it.”

What is true

◆ Refutation The paper is real and the observation was honest, but the word doing the work here is not in it.

What is measured

On 7 March 1794 several people saw a star-like point of light on the earthlit part of a crescent Moon. An occultation of Aldebaran was under way the same evening. Modern recordings of occultations settle the physics: a star crossed by the Moon is cut off at the limb in under a second, with no fading, which is what an opaque body with no atmosphere does.

What would show this is wrong

a recorded lunar occultation in which the star stays visible while the Moon’s disc passes over it, or fades gradually rather than being cut off at the limb.

Sources

  1. Wilkins, W. & Maskelyne, N. (1794). An Account of an Appearance of Light, like a Star, Seen in the Dark Part of the Moon, on Friday the 7th of March, 1794. Philosophical Transactions of the link
  2. Wilkins, W., Stretton, T. & Maskelyne, N. (1794). An Account of an Appearance of Light, like a Star, Seen Lately in the Dark Part of the Moon, by Thomas Stretton, in St John’s Square, Clerke link
  3. Lunar impact flashes and transient lunar phenomena. Transient luminous events on the unilluminated lunar disc, magnitude 3 to 10, mostly vanishing in a fraction of a second, caused by hyperv link
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