Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope Spencer Jones, was active in an international project for determining the solar parallax through observations of the minor planet Eros. In the second half of the twentieth century Alan Cousins set up very precise southern standards for UBV and introduced a widely used system of VRI photometry that enjoyed international recognition for precision. In 1977 the occultation of the star SAO 158687 was observed by Joseph Churms from the former Royal Observatory and these observations provided needed confirmation of the Uranian rings discovered from the Kuiper aeroplane by Elliot et al. During the 19th century the Observatory was regarded as
A Beautiful Planet twisted, inverted; you can completely lose your spatial awareness about where you are and what your attitude is, and you can easily get tangled up in that safety tether if you're not cautious. Every single movement you make, you're making an effort to think [things] through." After spending almost the entire film scrutinizing the Earth and the ISS (with its astronauts) in low Earth orbit, one of the final scenes of "A Beautiful Planet" briefly examines an important extrasolar planet (a planet outside of our solar system) which was discovered in 2014. The planet, Kepler-186f, was the first approximately-Earth-sized planet