Tātai Arorangi - Māori Astronomy
Centuries of celestial navigation throughout Te Moana nui a Kiwa (Pacific Ocean) nurtured a sophisticated navigation system using the passage of celestial bodies - the sun, moon and stars - to track the course of a vessel and mark the passage of time. This expertise utilised a complete understanding of their vessels and in some cases a kapehu whetū (Māori star compass). Underpinned by multigenerational mātauranga to recognise the swells, currents, winds, clouds, ocean temperature, the migration patterns of birds and marine life, even the smells of the ocean, navigators steered their waka along ara moana (ocean pathways) across Pacifica eventually reaching Aotearoa/New Zealand.
The ara moana leading to Aotearoa was known as the Ara i te Uru (pathway to the south-west). Discovered by Kupe, the instructions for the route to Aotearoa was memorialised in the instructions Kupe gave to his people (some say his grandson or nephew Nukutawhiti) when he arrived back to Hawaiki. The instructions were to keep the sun and Venus to the right of his prow until he sighted Te Ika a Maui (the Milky Way, also known as Māngōroa) lying across the horizon. When he saw that, he would be at the latitude of Aotearoa. Some of the known Māori celestial names for Venus, the brightest celestial object after the sun and moon, illustrate phases: Meremere-tū-ahiahi (evening rising Venus), Kōpū (morning rising Venus) and Tāwera (morning rising Venus when Venus is abandoned by Kōpūnui/Jupiter).
Once settled in Aotearoa, the tradition of tātai arorangi or Māori astronomy was put to great use. The extensive knowledge of the night sky was applied to practices such as food production, house building and sea navigation. Communities had a good working understanding of tātai arorangi through its application to everyday tasks like gardening and hunting, while deeper knowledge resided with tohunga kōkōrangi and tohunga tātai arorangi, the ‘teachers and specialists’. The names and associated traditions of the celestial objects visible to the eye were encoded through tikanga (customs/traditions), tauparapara (chant), waiata (song), pūrakau (storytelling), whakairo (carving) and raranga (weaving). Naturally occurring astronomical events can be found in Te Reo Māori to describe the characteristics, behaviours and interactions of people and references to stars are found in lamentations for the dead, songs or phrases. For example, the whakataukī, Mehemea ko Kōpū e rere ana i te pae translated to mean ‘like Venus as it appears over the horizon in the morning’ and is applied to an attractive person. Associative Te Reo names and phrases continue to be used today. For example, Tāwhaki, one of the tipua (demi gods) who sought celestial knowledge, is the name given to a space platform project at Kaitorete Spit, a long finger of land running south-west from Te Pātaka a Rākaihautū/Banks Peninsula, about 40 kilometres south of the Transit of Venus Observation Site at Burnham.
This experiential knowledge of the stars, moon and sun was used for hundreds of years in Aotearoa/New Zealand prior to the visit of Captain James Cook in the Endeavour in late 1769.
A Rare Astronomical Event
A Transit of Venus, where the planet Venus can be viewed as a black dot moving across the face of the sun, occurs in pairs eight years apart separated by long gaps of between 105 and 121 years. Transits of Venus had been observed in 1639, 1761 and 1769. Famously, Captain James Cook in the Endeavour had observed the Transit of Venus across in the Sun in June 1769 while in King George’s Land (Tahiti) before heading on to explore the southern seas. In October that same year he reached Aotearoa/New Zealand. On 9 November 1769, Cook helped his astronomer, Charles Green, observe the Transit of Mercury, at Te Whanganui-o-Hei (Mercury Bay), Coromandel Peninsula. The results of Cook’s and other expeditions’ observing the eighteenth-century Transits of Venus had limitations, however, and questions remained unanswered.
One of world astronomy’s great goals during the nineteenth century therefore remained trying to measure the true distance between Earth and the Sun. This would be of practical importance. An accurate knowledge of the Sun’s distance would be essential for perfecting lunar and planetary tables and, therefore, the science of navigation, as well as finding the true longitudes of places on the Earth’s surface. With plenty of lead-in time, astronomers and observatories were primed to try again for accurate measurements of the Transits of Venus in 1874 and 1882, and this time they had the added technology of photography and less complex transport options than in the eighteenth century.
The British Admiralty was at the forefront. Astronomer Royal for England, Sir George Airy, began putting together an expeditionary programme in 1872, and in 1873 he engaged Captain George Lyon Tupman of the Royal Marine Artillery to be its chief coordinator. Tupman set up a hub at Greenwich, London, with prefabricated observatory huts, observation equipment and models for the five British teams to train before being dispatched to their designated stations, A to E, around the world, as follows:
- Station A: Egypt
- Station B: Hawaiian (Sandwich) Islands
- Station C: Rodriguez Island
- Station D: New Zealand
- Station E: Kerguelen Island.
The planned spread of expedition locations, at widely separated latitudes, was to obtain good baselines for the triangulation of Venus against the backdrop of the sun.
New Zealand’s Favourable Location
New Zealand was anticipated to be an ideal location for observing the entire transit of 9 December 1874 as, weather permitting, it would be visible during daylight hours. This attracted not only the British, but also American, French and German expeditionary teams to the New Zealand mainland and adjacent islands. The Americans set up at Queenstown and on Chatham Island. The French and Germans established their transit stations in the subantarctic, the French on Campbell Island and the Germans had theirs at Port Ross, Auckland Island.
The British, Station D, New Zealand
In the two years leading up to the 1874 Transit of Venus, Professor Airy in Greenwich liaised closely with New Zealand leaders and officials, including Julius Vogel, William Fox, Governor Sir G. F. Bowen and James Hector to ensure appropriate site selection and support. At the suggestion of Julius von Haast from the Canterbury Museum, and James Hector, of the Colonial Museum in Wellington, Airy settled on the vicinity of Christchurch as the intended location for the New Zealand Station D. Meteorological information provided by, amongst others, politician John Hall, showed this would be a promising contender for good weather conditions for the observation.
The British expedition party to New Zealand, made up of Major Henry Spencer Palmer (Royal Engineers, Chief Astronomer), Lieutenant Leonard Darwin (Royal Engineers, Assistant Astronomer and Photographer), Lieutenant H. Crawford (Royal Navy, Assistant Astronomer) and three non-commissioned officers, left Plymouth, England, on 27 June 1874 aboard the clipper, Merope, along with 331 government sponsored emigrants. After arriving in Lyttelton on 27 September 1874, the expedition team was brought to Christchurch by train, staying at the Christchurch Club while they looked for a suitable observation site. Seven or eight potential sites were visited in and around Christchurch, including Hagley Park, but none was quite suitable. Finally, by early October 1874, a site at Burnham, on the Canterbury Plains, located some 18 miles (30 kilometres) south-west from Christchurch was determined to have the best prospect. Burnham had been established by Richard Bethell, an English immigrant who had bought a large tract of farmland in 1861 and named his property Burnham after his family estate in England.
Richard Bethell was not the first person present on the Canterbury Plains, however. For more than 500 years Māori had traversed the plains with its large tracts of sandy-yellow native tussock, intersected by meandering rivers and pockets of native bush.
Kā Pākihi Whakatekateka a Waitaha
Kā Pākihi Whakatekateka a Waitaha (Canterbury Plains) stretches from the Rakahuri (Ashley River) down to the Waitaki River and inland to the foothills of Ka Tiritiri o te Moana (the Southern Alps). The plains once provided an abundant food store for Waitaha, followed by Ngāti Mamoe and then Ngāi Tahu who travelled the plains on hunting and kai gathering expeditions. The major rivers provided access routes for Māori travelling from the eastern coast inland to passes leading across the southern alps to Tai Poutini (West Coast). Known trails across the plains connected pā with the closest to Burnham being the Whakaepa Pā located on a bluff south of the Waikirikiri near present day Coalgate. Māori from Kaiapoi and Taumutu seasonally joined their relatives at Whakaepa Pā to undertake kai gathering expeditions to Waikawa (Lake Lyndon) and to travel through to Arahura on the West Coast. In 1848, the Crown purchased the Plains from Ngāi Tahu as part of the nearly 14,000,000-acre Canterbury purchase. This controversial sale changed land tenure and enabled the establishment of colonial settlement and large farming estates such as Burnham.
The Burnham Site
In 1871, the Canterbury Provincial Government had purchased the land from Richard Bethell and established an Industrial School, within the government reserve. The government initially intended to house children from the Canterbury Orphanage and Reformatory but, as established from the early 1870s, the Burnham Industrial School became more of a school for young offenders. The Industrial School had only opened in 1873, a year before the British transit party came and selected the site close by for its observatory.
The Burnham site had stable gravels, a good climate and was handy to the railway ‘for conveyance of the apparatus from Lyttelton, easy telegraphic communication, and an uninterrupted view of the sky and horizon’. The Burnham Railway Station, on the main North-South telegraph line, stood about 730 metres to the south-east of the transit observation site. The railway was used to transport the 60-80 tons of English equipment and supplies, which included four prefabricated huts and associated astronomical instruments from Greenwich. Building materials, including thousands of bricks, some cement, sand and timber, were also delivered by rail in the first weeks of October.
The observatory site, about an acre in size, was marked out and excavations for the piers began in early October 1874. Local contractors, paid for by the government, assisted Palmer by constructing the instrument piers. Records from the Canterbury Railways regarding materials brought to the site in early October 1874 mention, on several occasions, the England Brothers, and it is surmised that this building partnership was involved in their construction. Already accustomed to government contracts, the England Brothers would have been familiar with the wider Burnham site, as they’d been brought in to finish construction of the Industrial School building earlier that year, in February 1874. Canterbury Railways records relating to the Transit of Venus expedition, dated October 1874, detail all manner of packages and building items brought to the site, including bricks from Heathcote and ‘England Bros.’ timber, lime and ironwork.
The foundations for the telescopes and huts were built three feet (0.91 metres) taller than originally planned to mitigate any ‘mirages’ from the area’s frequent warm winds that might affect observations. Piers and stands erected on the observatory site enclosure were: four brick piers, for the four chief instruments (Photoheliograph, Altazimuth, Transit and 6-inch Equatorial); small brick columns/columns for raising the two larger huts (Photoheliograph and Equatorial); and small brick pier standing a few feet north of the Transit Hut for a collimating telescope.
The prefabricated huts were erected, and instruments installed on their piers, ready for testing, by the end of October 1874. The observatory site, enclosed by a five-foot (1.5 metre high) paling fence, contained four observatory huts - one square and three hexagonal - and four square military tents which were used for storage.
The detail of each hut and associated astronomical instruments and clocks, and their intended operations was as follows:
The Transit Hut, a square hut, likely with a canvas roof, housed ‘…a transit instrument for the purpose of determining accurate time, and a transit clock which will be the standard of time. All chronometers of the expedition, whose rates are determined daily by comparison with the transit clock are also in this hut, so that they will be available at any time for determining the difference of longitude by transportation of chronometers. The transit instrument is by Troughton and Simms, of London. It is 3 ½ inches aperture, 40 inches focal length, and is mounted on massive piers of Portland stone. These piers rest on a base stone of the same material, which is supported, like the base stones of all the instruments, on a massive brick pier sunk to a depth of 6 or 7ft where it rests upon a bed of concrete. The brick piers are isolated by leaving a few inches open space around them, and in this way no tremor can be transmitted to the instruments, either by movements in the huts or in the vicinity.’
The Altazimuth Hut was hexagonal in shape and had a dome shaped roof that could be revolved to any required position. It contained ‘the Altazimuth, also by Troughton and Simms, which has circles of 16in diameter; the horizontal and vertical circles being each fitted with four reading-microscopes. A Dent’s clock also stands in the hut, and is regulated by daily comparisons with the transit clock. The Altazimuth is used for determining latitudes by observations of stars and also for observing azimuth and zenith distances of the moon in any part of the sky for the purpose of determining longitude’. The hut’s interior also had brackets for lamps, thermometers and barometers.
The Equatorial Hut was also hexagonal in shape and housed the equatorial telescope that Palmer would use for the eye observations of the Transit of Venus. ‘It is a refracting telescope of six inches aperture, by Troughton and Simms, equatorially mounted, and driven by a clock, which moves the instrument in the opposite direction to the earth at such a rate of speed as to keep the instrument fixed on any one particular star. The telescope is fitted with an Airey’s [sic] solar diagonal eye piece, which is designed to obviate the danger of the eye lenses cracking from the sun’s heat; and it is also furnished with a beautiful apparatus called a double-image micrometer, which will be used during the transit for measuring the position of Venus on the sun’s edge. It can also be utilised when Venus is wholly on the sun for measuring the distance between her edge and the near edge of the sun so long as that distance does not exceed her own diameter. In these two ways a large number of very good measures of the planet’s position on the sun’s face will be obtained irrespectively of the true contact, and as the exact time of each observation will be noted, it will be possible by comparison of the measurements to infer the time of contact with great precision from them alone should this be necessary’. A Dent’s clock also stood in this hut so that the times of the successive phases of the transit could be accurately noted and registered.
The Photoheliograph Hut, a hexagonal hut with an attached darkroom, housed the Dallmeyer photoheliograph, described as having ‘the appearance of a large telescope about 9ft in length, which, instead of having an eye-piece, has a photographic camera at the eye end. Like the principal telescope, it is equatorially mounted, and driven by clockwork. There are two different methods of taking photographs on the day of the transit. The first of these, which is the invention of M. Janssen, is used just at the times of “ingress”, or apparent entry of Venus on the sun’s surface, and “egress”, or departure from the surface, which are the two phases most suitable for observation. By this (Janssen’s) method the instrument takes fifty small photographs round the edge of one circular plate at intervals of a second. Each photograph will not be more than one inch in length by half an inch in width, but it will include all that is required, viz., that small portion of the sun’s edge, across which Venus is just moving. When Venus gets too far from the edge for this method, single photographs will be taken at intervals of about two or three minutes, on square six inch plates. This gives a perfect image of the sun four inches in diameter.’
The use of photography was an important part of the 1874 observation programme and was the reason photographer, Leonard Darwin, son of naturalist Charles Darwin, was in the expedition team. At short notice, at the suggestion of Haast, the party also brought in Edward Sealy, a surveyor and amateur photographer from Timaru, to assist. Sealy arrived at the Burnham observation station just four days before the transit.
Other features outside the observatory enclosure were set up, for checks of measurement and communications. One was ‘the meridian mark’, erected some 91.75 chains (6,054 feet, that is 1.8 kilometres) to the south of the Transit Hut and comprising ‘a plate of iron mounted on a brick pier at a height of about 7ft from the ground perforated for the night illumination, which is adjusted with the utmost nicety to the true meridian.
Another feature, set up on small wooden stands some 400 feet [122 metres] eastward from the Equatorial Hut, was the model Transit of Venus. Devised by Airy back in England for observers to practice on, this artificial model was described as ‘… a simple but ingenious contrivance and affords an excellent means of testing the properties of irradiation as exhibited by different telescopes to different observers and under varying conditions of sunlight. … The observers will practise with this between now and the day of transit and it will also be available for the instruction of any gentlemen who intend to take part in the transit observations and who may attend at the observatory to acquire a knowledge of the details.’
The Telegraph and Ancillary Stations
Branch telegraph wires were carried, on posts, from the main telegraph line at Burnham to the observatory enclosure. The telegraph wires at the Transit Hut were then used to transmit time signals to other points of observation in New Zealand, and also to determine the difference of the longitude. Telegraphic clock comparisons could be made with for five substations for observation, all of which had direct telegraphic communication with the Burnham observatory. The substations associated with Burnham were at Grahamstown (near Thames), Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin and Naseby. Time-signals transmitted from the standard clock at Burnham to these subsidiary observatories (substations) was directly referred to as ‘Burnham Time’.
The Burnham party also exchanged time signals with other observation expedition parties, including the Americans in Queenstown and even with the French ship, Vire, before its departure for the Campbell Island French party observation site.
Engaged Community
Throughout New Zealand, there was considerable interest in the 1874 Transit of Venus, and an excited public was provided with information in newspapers, particularly focusing on eye-protection since observing the transit involved looking at the Sun. Shopkeepers and jewellers advertised special glasses and dark glass fittings for telescopes to enable viewings. The Burnham expedition leaders were called on for engagements including a banquet hosted by the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury on 8 October 1874, presided over by Haast, and where both Palmer and Darwin spoke. Palmer explained how the scientific endeavours of observing the transit would have a practical result apart from its scientific interest of fixing the distance of the Earth from the Sun (by means of which all astronomical distances would be fixed) – it would, he said, enable perfect the Lunar Theory and therefore be important to shipping and commerce generally and improve navigation and communication. Darwin commented that ‘the other colonies would do well to imitate New Zealand in making the Scientific Institutions of the country keep pace with the growth of the national wealth’.
The Canterbury Provincial Government was delighted to be involved and provided considerable assistance. This included ‘the construction of instrument piers and other observatory works, the telegraphic connections and free use of wires, and the expense of forming subsidiary stations’. A wing was cleared in the Industrial School to provide accommodation for the officers, while other ranks were put up in a cottage near the observation station. By the end of October 1874, Palmer was looking to hire a ‘plain cook’ to cook for four officers at the Transit of Venus Officers’ Mess at Burnham.
Leading up to the 9 December transit date, the busy Burnham site was also an attraction for visitors, especially those associated with observation sites elsewhere. These included the Chief Commissioner of Crown Lands in Otago, John Turnbull Thomson, and Chief Surveyor of Otago, James McKerrow, who received instructions for their observation site in Dunedin, as well as representatives from the French frigate Vire, supporting the Transit of Venus observations at Campbell Island. Other visitors included Canterbury settlers, Bishop Harper, Mrs J. Studholme, Mrs Leonard Harper and John Acland and his wife, all of whom were keen on making observations from their own properties. For the actual observation period, the station had two foot-police to guard against intrusions and two mounted police as messengers in case of emergency such as fire.
The Day: 9 December 1874
On the morning of 9 December, Palmer and his team were met with cloudy weather in New Zealand at the critical phases of the 1874 transit. Nevertheless, every phenomenon that could be seen was carefully observed. While bad weather prevented observations of the first contact, the clouds then thinned so that Venus could be seen at about 3/8ths of her diameter onto the Sun. Darwin managed to get about 13 weak photographs, enough to measure. Sealy took at least one wet-plate photograph, too, before the clouds thickened. At the time, Palmer was deeply disappointed, feeling that his observation results were of little value. Observations were little better globally.
After the 1874 Event
In the years following the 9 December 1874 observation event and leading up to the 1882 Transit of Venus, several important things occurred relating to the Burnham site. Palmer continued to make important measurements and arranged for the site to be secured before he carried out an additional task in early 1875, an assessment of the state of survey in New Zealand. It wasn’t until 1877 that the real value of Palmer and his team’s Transit of Venus observations was realised.
Throughout the rest of December 1874 and through to 8 January 1875, Palmer continued to take observations to determine absolute longitude of the Burnham station, as well as the difference of longitude between Burnham and the American station at Queenstown. Establishing a fixed line of reference for the surveys, the terminal points were accurately marked, by surveyor Walter Kitson, with ‘small stone pillars’.
In October 1876 the Lyttelton Times reported that a Transit of Venus pillar built of brick and set in concrete had been demolished and its material used to repair a chimney. Initially there was great alarm and, as an imperial matter, it was thought the destroyer might have to be prosecuted under the Trigonometrical station and Survey Marks Act 1868. The brick pillar was one of Palmer’s more distant ones, some two kilometres to the south-west, on Rural Section No. 12663, and ‘held a lamp which was used as a reference point for meridian’. However, because it was not a trigonometrical station, strictly speaking, and was said to have been erected on private property soon after the observing party had completed their transit observations, no punishment was pursued.
Before he left the Burnham site, Palmer was at pains to ensure the main observation site was left in the best way possible for its reuse for the next Transit of Venus, to occur in 1882. Many items, including the four observatory huts, carefully dismantled, were stored in a shed but the Base Stones relating to the Transit instrument, Equatorial instrument, Photoheliograph and Altazimuth instrument were left in their places on their brick piers and covered. Palmer arranged that the Base Stones be examined annually to ensure their surfaces don’t suffer weather damage and everything was kept in its true position. He also requested trees be planted round the observatory enclosure, so that in eight years’ time, they’d have grown sufficiently to provide a welcome shelter from the strong winds. The astronomical observation instruments themselves were returned to Greenwich in 1875. Items stored in the shed – dismantled huts, ladders, lamps, scaffold, water barrels, construction tools, packing cases etc – were identified as property of the British Admiralty but in the care of the Superintendent of Canterbury. The numerous piers and stands left in situ at Burnham, on the other hand, were considered property of the General Government of New Zealand.
Major Palmer’s Report on the State of the Surveys in New Zealand
The high calibre and precise survey measurements carried out by Palmer as part of his Burnham station duties led to an unexpected additional task while he was in New Zealand. At the end of December 1874, the New Zealand Government asked Palmer to provide ‘a reliable professional opinion upon the state of the surveys in New Zealand, with a view to the initiation of a thorough system of trigonometrical surveys’. The Government was keen for a whole ‘survey of the country and to gradually but speedily eliminate the errors and discrepancies that of the previous inadequate and make-shift process of surveys’. Once his special Transit of Venus duties were complete, Palmer obliged, potentially because he wanted to salvage some good from what he’d thought had been a less than successful expedition. For around six weeks, starting 20 January 1875, Palmer toured the colony, examining maps, field-books and other office documents at all but one of the chief Provincial Survey Offices. While some were adequate, he found many surveys imperfect, and in parts wholly inaccurate. Palmer’s report, presented to the Government in May 1875, was especially scathing with respect to surveys of Native and Confiscated Land, many of which had been slovenly made and were defective, ‘at a frightful cost to the Natives’. Palmer’s report recommended that surveying should be centralised in one department, that the Government should set up a national triangulation programme, a uniform map projection should be adopted and surveyors should be required to pass an examination to be recognised as qualified. While Palmer’s recommendations were not taken up entirely, his findings were pivotal and led to a national triangulation system of survey and a new government position of Surveyor-General. The first to hold this national position in the newly established Survey Department, appointed on 1 May 1876, was John Turnbull Thomson, who’d visited Palmer’s Burnham observation site in 1874.
Delayed Recognition
In 1877, after the eye-observations at all the stations had been reduced and compared, it was found that Palmer’s observations, rather than being of little value, were in fact of great importance and, back in England, Airy highly commended him for the observations of the preliminary phenomena.
Transit of Venus, 1882
For the 1882 Transit of Venus, over 40 expeditions were dispatched around the world to make observations from the Americas, Europe, southern Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Only the British and Americans returned to New Zealand in 1882. The British once again established themselves at the Burnham site, though they had enlisted New Zealand observers around the country instead of formal ancillary stations. The Americans set up in the Auckland Domain. The Transit of Venus that would take place on 7 December 1882 in New Zealand was different from that of 1874 in that it was to be only partly visible, with the Sun rising when planet Venus’s transit across its disc would already be about two-thirds complete.
By the end of October 1882, the ‘old observatory station’ at Burnham was being put in order ready for British observation party, this time led by Colonel Tupman, who had been the chief coordinator of the 1874 British transit expedition parties. When Tupman and his fellow representative from the Royal Society, Lieutenant G.E. Coke, arrived at the site in early November 1882, they were pleased to see ‘the piers, wooden huts and other fittings’ left at the site by Palmer were in good state of preservation, ready for reuse. Concern that the ‘stones fixed to the ground’ from 1874 might have been disturbed by recent construction associated with the Industrial School were unfounded and everything was confirmed to be in its true position. As before, the Industrial School assisted the transit party as directed, including furnishing cottages for their use. Back in England, overall responsibility for the 1882 British expeditions rested with Edward Stone, the Radcliffe Observer at Oxford, and it is thought that Stone arranged the logistics for Burnham’s Transit D instrumentation (and subsequent return to Greenwich). Unlike the 1874 observations, the 1882 observations at Burnham were done without photography, and therefore it seems fewer observatory huts were required.
The Day: 7 December 1882
On the day, after an initial light cirrus cloud present at sunrise cleared, the latter stages of observation were perfectly clear. Assisting Tupman in the Burnham observations were Coke (and his wife), Tupman’s wife (Rebecca), John Gell and Mr White, both from the New Zealand Telegraph Department and Bombardier Wilson. Mr Hamilton of the Lyttelton Times newspaper was also present, providing insight into the Burnham activities on 7 December 1882:
‘Bombardier Wilson, Colonel Tupman’s body guard, retinue, factotum, and assistant rolled into one, and the carpenter began their work very soon after 4 am, taking the roofs off the two huts in which the equatorials are mounted, and clearing the decks for action generally. Forces were divided as follows between the two observatories: - In the one in which stands the larger, or 6in telescope, were Colonel Tupman at the instrument, Mrs Tupman at the chronometer counting the seconds with a regularity and accuracy which long practice has given her, and Mr Gell, the telegraphist sent from Wellington to work the galvanometer, to give clerical assistance in writing down times of contact, &c, and the few remarks which it was possible for the observer to make during the actual transit, and for the appearances which met his gaze immediately before it. Bombardier Wilson as an extra assistant. In the second were stationed Lieutenant and Mrs Coke and Mr White, the general telegraphist to the observatory.’
Their observations were quickly deemed a success. Time-signals were distributed from Tupman’s party in Burnham to South Island observers, and from Survey Observatory in Wellington to several North Island observers and Nelson. The correct longitude of the stations was established through the exchange of signals between Burnham and Auckland, Burnham and Wellington, Wellington and New Plymouth, Wellington and Bidwell's, Wairarapa. Tupman also exchanged time-signals by cable with Sydney, and subsequently the gaps in the exchange of time-signals between Sydney and Greenwich were completed, meaning there was now an unbroken line of longitude determination, binding the various stations together. In short, this was the first time the difference between Greenwich Mean Time and New Zealand Standard Time was accurately established, named the ‘Burnham Fundamental’.
After the 1882 Transit of Venus, the instruments were once again removed. In early 1883, the ‘the veritable chronograph used by Colonel Tupman in observing the transit of Venus’ was temporarily on display at the Colonial Museum in Wellington. However, for quite some time many other features remained at the Burnham site. By the end of 1883, conclusions derived from the 1882 Transit of Venus observations around the world, using the parallax method, were that the Earth-Sun distance was 92.7 million miles.
Continued Interest
Scientists continued to keep an eye on the Burnham site, including those involved with the Canterbury Philosophical Institute such as Dr Coleridge Farr, a physics professor and engineer who’d undertaken a magnetic survey of New Zealand in the early twentieth century. Four times a year astronomer Frank Hitchings would give a lecture to the boys at the Burnham Industrial School on astronomical matters and he would always check out the former observatory site grounds. From as early as 1902, it was recognised that the site was ‘an historical spot’ needing preserving. Thomas Archey, director of the Burnham Industrial School for nearly 20 years from 1899 did what he could to protect it, and had it fenced.
In 1909, the Minister of Education was shown ‘some interesting scientific relics’ at the Burnham site, ‘in the form of the buildings and brick foundations for astronomical instruments used by the party of astronomers from England who witnessed the transit of Venus there in 1874’. They included ‘two small buildings, like summer-houses, of hexagonal shape, and four brick foundations of pedestal form which were used for telescope foundations,’ the most interesting relic being ‘a flat concrete disc which marks the meridian’. On visiting the site in 1913, Anglo-American astronomer, lecturer and science journalist, Miss Mary Proctor, was pleased to see a carefully preserved memento of the 1874 transit expedition, in the form of ‘the stones and formation work on which the instruments were placed at the time of the transit of Venus’.
When William Henry Skinner, Commissioner of Crown Lands, inspected the site in early September 1918, he found ‘a small patch of ground, about one acre surrounding the observatory hut and the permanent pillars set up for carrying various instruments’. An experienced surveyor and historian, Skinner was also president of the Philosophical Institute and, through previous work in Taranaki in the early twentieth century, had involvement some of New Zealand’s first historic reserves. Along with Hitchings, Farr and others from the Philosophical Institute, Skinner was eager that the Transit of Venus Observation Site in Burnham be made into a historic reserve. It was, he said, ‘the initial point of survey data throughout New Zealand.’
Historic Reserve Status
In 1871 the wider site at Burnham had been permanently reserved by the Canterbury Provincial Government as a site for an orphanage. In fact the site had become the Industrial School in 1872-1873, but in 1918 that was emptied of its residents and closed. Parts of the Industrial School site were used for military camps and eventually, in 1920, it was taken over by the New Zealand Defence Department. The closure of the Industrial School and pending change in land status was an appropriate time to mark protection for the old observation site.
In September 1918, it was announced that ‘the Government had at last taken steps towards the proper preservation of the site at Burnham from which the Transit of Venus was observed by Major Palmer in 1874. The latitude and longitude of no other spot in New Zealand was so accurately determined as of that site, which was the starting point for the whole survey of the Dominion. … The site was on the State property at Burnham, but its official preservation would secure it for all time as one of the Dominion’s historic spots’.
Under the Reserves and other Lands Disposal and Public Bodies Empowering Act 1920, the reserve status of the observation site was changed in 1920 to become a historic reserve, ‘comprising the site of the astronomical observation station at Burnham used in connection with the transit of Venus in the year eighteen hundred and seventy-four’.
A detailed survey of the ‘site of the Transit of Venus Observation 1874’ historic reserve was carried out by F.H. Waters in March 1920. Waters’ measured survey included a diagram labelling two brick pillars, observatory, concrete platform over Burnham Trig, concrete pillars, and a sunken platform.
Despite its historic reserve status, by 1963 the site was overgrown and in a state of neglect and ‘the various brick and concrete pillars and platforms’ were ‘in danger of displacement or damage by tree roots’. R. E. Johnston, on the ground at the Burnham Camp, said in May 1963 that as well as ‘two brick pylons on the site there are an additional six other pieces of masonry, each having its own significance’. R.J. MacLaughlan, Director General, Lands & Survey suggested ‘it would be best if a minimum area be fenced to include the pillar used for a precise levelling benchmark and the old Burnham trig station and the remaining marks and pillars reduced to ground level, that all trees in the vicinity be removed and the remainder of the area grassed down…’
J.M. Grant, Chief Surveyor, was despatched to the site in late 1963. Referring to the alphabetically labelled features recorded in Waters’ 1920 diagram, Grant found that the brick pillar (a) is used for bench mark U/40/25 and that the ‘Burnham fundamental’ is also joined to this brick pillar. The brick pillar ‘f’, he said, was also in a good state of preservation. Although he didn’t lift the concrete platform, he had no doubt the old Burnham trig station was undisturbed. Of the observatory ‘b’, there was no sign. And of the concrete pillars ‘d’, ‘g’ and ‘h’, there were just broken remnants. Grant promised to make sure that the old trig Burnham observatory, sunken platform and brick pillar ‘f’ were preserved with a buried mark.
In 1964-1965 the site was tidied, and brass Lands and Survey marks were added to existing pillars and measured points. Some water pipes, as part of a wider scheme, were laid within the historic reserve around the same time. In 1965, Lands and Survey Department added a brass commemorative plaque to brick pillar (a). The plaque, likely made by A.W. Fraser & Sons, has carefully worded text focusing on the successful observations by Tupman on the 1882 Transit of Venus, with no mention of Palmer or the 1874 event.
In 1984 the Department of Lands and Survey prepared a management plan for the Transit of Venus Historic Reserve. Although the maintenance of the reserve has been undertaken by the New Zealand Defence Force at Burnham Military Camp, the Department of Lands and Survey and, from 1987, the Department of Conservation have been the agencies responsible for administering the Reserves Act 1977. In 2009 a new heritage management plan for the Transit of Venus Site was prepared by Ian Bowman and Opus International Consultants, for the New Zealand Defence Force. Since then, further heritage and archaeological assessment reports have been prepared by consultants to guide conservation of the site.
