1769 Transit of Venus observed from Tahiti while voyaging to (unsuccessfully) observe the 1761 Transit in Sumatra. Using the solar parallax values obtained from the 1769 transit, Hornsby wrote in "Philosophical Transitions" December 1771 that "the mean distance from the Earth to the Sun (is) 93,726,900 English miles." The radar-based value used today for the astronomical unit is . This is only a difference of eight-tenths of one percent. Considering what these astronomers had to work with, their results were "absolutely remarkable". 1769 Transit of Venus observed from Tahiti On June 3, 1769, British navigator Captain James Cook, British naturalist Joseph Banks, British astronomer Charles Green and
Explorer AUV Explorer AUV Explorer (Tan Suo Zhe, 探索者) autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is a Chinese AUV developed in the People's Republic of China (PRC), first entering service in November 1994. It should not be confused with another two Anglo-American AUVs that share the same name: the American Autonomous Benthic Explorer AUV (ABE) built by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the British Columbia-based International Submarine Engineering built Canadian Explorer AUV, which is based on its earlier ARCS AUV. Explore AUV is the first member of a series of Chinese AUVs later developed, all of which are based on Explorer AUV. Explorer AUV