Transit of Venus
Next week is a very important and rare scientific event: a transit of Venus. I first read about this phenomenon in Bill Bryson’s book A Short History of Nearly Everything. Captain Cook’s first voyage was actually to Tahiti to observe and record the 1769 transit. After the transit, he opened his sealed orders and learned he was to try to find the rumoured “Terra Australis.” And here we are!
Important Note
This site features content going all the way back to 2000. The posts you’ll read reflect my views and writing style at the time. While I have gone back to clean up a few of them, I think it’s important not to sanitise too much. This site is a record of who I am and how I’ve grown. Any blog post written years ago may not reflect who I am today, nor how I would write about the same topic today.
Comments
2 responses to “Transit of Venus”
Yes! Nathaniel ordered eclipse viewing glasses and could only get a pack of 25, so we’re having a viewing party :).
We should both take measurements and see if he can calculate the Astronomical Unit from them! 🙂