Where a king watched a transit of Venus
The old meridian
Kew Observatory was built by Sir William Chambers for George III to watch the transit of Venus in 1769.
The view from the bank of the Thames to Kew Observatory has been opened up again. Look through the slit in the marker post towards the observatory in the distant trees and you are looking along the line of the old meridian.
London??s official time used to be set from the calculations based on the line of longitude running through Kew. Later this work was taken over by the observatory at Greenwich.
The transits come in pairs. Many people observed the one in June 2004. There will be another in 2012 but it will not be visible from London.
Submitted by: Andrew Hunt, 21 January 2007
