On this day in 1769…

Captain James Cook, the Endeavour’s astronomer Charles Green and the rest of the men employed in observing the transit of Venus woke to fine weather and a clear view of the rare celestial event they’d traveled so far to see.

Astronomy explained…

…upon Sir Isaac Newton’s Principles: and made easy to those who have not studied mathematics. This was the title of a book by the self-educated Scottish astronomer and instrument maker James Ferguson, whose work did much to popularize the understanding

The transit of Venus and the longitude problem – a brief(ish) history

The size of the solar system was one of the chief puzzles of 18th century science. Astronomers of the day knew that six planets – Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – orbited the Sun (they had not yet

Venus and the black drop effect

A diagram of the 1769 transit of Venus and an explanation of how astronomers used the principle of parallax to measure the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Notice the distortion of Venus’ disk near the edge of the