It's the first time the international community joined together to combine in a scientific experiment.
The idea was that if numerous explorers/scientists at many different areas of the earth record the time/trajectory of the transit of venus, they could calculate exactly how far away from the earth the sun was.
The experiment worked and they came to what we now know was very accurate results.
Captain Cook was one of the explorers recording it on the newly discovered Hawaiian islands.
nuanced_discussion t1_jeaz5hw wrote
Reply to TIL that the oldest film on IMDb is "Passage de Vénus", a six second series of photographs of the transit of the planet Venus across the Sun on December 9th, 1874. by PresLyndonBJohnson36
The 1769 transit of venus is fascinating.
It's the first time the international community joined together to combine in a scientific experiment.
The idea was that if numerous explorers/scientists at many different areas of the earth record the time/trajectory of the transit of venus, they could calculate exactly how far away from the earth the sun was.
The experiment worked and they came to what we now know was very accurate results.
Captain Cook was one of the explorers recording it on the newly discovered Hawaiian islands.