Transit of Venus

On June 8th, Venus will transit in front of the Sun. It will appear like as a dark circle moving across the face of the Sun. This is a historic transit, for it was in 1768 that James Cook, on a mission sponsored by England's Royal Astronomical Society, set sail for Tahiti to construct an observatory to observe Venus' transit a year later. Venus transits the Sun for us to see every 120 years, so it was a historic moment. Unfortunately, Cook's logs doesn't spend much time talking about Venus. Cook had other, secret orders from the Royal Navy, and after he was finished in Tahiti, he went off to search for a missing continent and mess with the Maori and Australian Aborigines.