Guillaume Joseph Hyacinthe Jean-Baptiste Le Gentil de la Galaisière (September 12, 1725 – October 22, 1792) was a French astronomer. September 12 is the 255th day of the year (256th in leap years). ... Events February 8 - Catherine I became empress of Russia February 20 - The first reported case of white men scalping Native Americans takes place in New Hampshire colony. ... October 22 is the 295th day of the year (296th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 70 days remaining. ... 1792 was a leap year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...

He was born in Coutances and first intended to enter the church before turning to astronomy. He discovered what are now known as the Messier objects M32, M36 and M38, as well as the nebulosity in M8, and he was the first to catalogue the dark nebula in the Cygnus constellation, sometimes known as Le Gentil 3. However, he is chiefly remembered today for the unfortunate fate that befell him when he set out to observe the transit of Venus in 1761 at Pondicherry, a French colony in India. Coutances is a commune of Normandy, France, in the Manche département, of which it is a sous-préfecture. ... Table of all 110 Messier objects. ... M32 refers to: Messier 32 a Messier object and an elliptical galaxy in the Andromeda constellation. ... Open Cluster M36 (also known as Messier Object 36, Messier 36, M36, or NGC 1960) is an open cluster in the Auriga constellation. ... Open Cluster M38 (also known as Messier Object 38, Messier 38, M38, or NGC 1912) is an open cluster in the Auriga constellation. ... Messier Object 8, the Lagoon Nebula. ... Cygnus (Latin for swan) is a northern constellation. ... The 2004 transit of Venus A transit of Venus across the Sun takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and the Earth, obscuring a small part of the Suns disc. ... Events January 16 - British capture Pondicherry, India from the French. ... Pondicherry (पॉंडिचेरी in Hindi), currently undergoing a name change to Puduchery, is the name of a union territory and its capital in the south of India. ... The Republic of India is the second most populous country in the world, with a population of more than one billion, and is the seventh largest country by geographical area. ...

He set out from Paris in March 1760, and reached Île de France (Mauritius) in July. But having learned that war had broken out between France and Britain, and deeming it dangerous to try and reach Pondicherry, he determined to go elsewhere; a frigate was bound for India's Coromandel Coast, and he sailed in March 1761. When they had nearly arrived they learned that the British had occupied Pondicherry, so the frigate was obliged to return to Île de France. June 6, the day of the transit, came, and the sky was clear, but he could not take astronomical observations with the vessel rolling about. He had gone abroad to see the transit of Venus, and there would be another in eight years, so he made up his mind to stay. (Transits of Venus occur in pairs 8 years apart, but each such pair is separated from the previous and next pairs by more than a century.) The Republic of Mauritius is an island country in the southwest Indian Ocean, about 900 km east of Madagascar. ... This article is about the 1756–1763 war. ... The French Republic or France (French: République française or France) is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in western Europe, and which is further made up of a collection of overseas islands and territories located in other continents. ... The word Britain is used to refer to the United Kingdom (UK) the island of Great Britain, which consists of the countries of England, Scotland, and Wales sometimes the Roman province called Britain or Britannia The word British generally means belonging to or associated with Britain in one of the... This article is about the Coromandel Coast of India. ...

After spending some time mapping the eastern coast of Madagascar, he decided to record the 1769 transit from Manila in the Philippines. Encountering hostility from the Spanish authorities there, he headed back to Pondicherry, which had been restored to France by peace treaty in 1763, where he arrived in March 1768. He built a small observatory and waited patiently. At last, the day in question (June 3, 1769) arrived, but although the mornings in the preceding month had all been lovely, on this day the sky became overcast, and Le Gentil saw nothing. For some time he was almost crazy, but at last he recovered enough strength to return to France. Madagascar is an island nation in the Indian Ocean, off the eastern coast of Africa. ... Events Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen exhibits the Mechanical Turk, a chess-playing machine May 14 - Charles III of Spain sends Spanish missionaries, who found California missions in San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Francisco and Monterey and begin the settlement of California. ... For other meanings of the word, see Manila (disambiguation). ... The Republic of the Philippines is a country of South East Asia, located in the western Pacific Ocean some 1,210 km (750 mi) from mainland Asia. ... Events February 10 - French and Indian War: The 1763 Treaty of Paris ends the war and France cedes Great Britain. ...

The return trip was first delayed by illness, and further when his ship was caught in a storm and dropped him off at Île Bourbon (Réunion), where he had to wait until a Spanish ship took him home. He finally arrived in Paris in October 1771, only to find that he had been declared legally dead, he had been replaced in the Royal Academy of Sciences, his wife had remarried, and all his possessions had been distributed to his heirs. It required lengthy litigation to correct the latter problem, but intervention of the king soon gave him back a seat in the academy, and he remarried and lived apparently happily for another 21 years. Réunion is an island, as well as an overseas département (département doutre-mer, or DOM) of France, located in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar. ...

Further reading

• The story of Le Gentil is memorably related in Timothy Ferris's Coming of Age in the Milky Way.
• Le Gentil's attempt to view the eclipse in India also figures in Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything.
• Le Gentil himself was the author of Voyage dans les mers de l'Inde, fait par ordre du Roi, à l'occasion du passage de Vénus, sur le disque du Soleil, le 6 juin 1761 & le 3 du même mois 1769 par M. Le Gentil, de l'académie royale des sciences. Imprimé par ordre de sa Majesté, two volumes, Paris 1779 and 1781.