1769 Transit of Venus observed from Tahiti 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 Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander recorded the transit of Venus on the island of Tahiti during Cook's first voyage around the world. During a transit, Venus appears as a small black disc travelling across the Sun. This unusual astronomical phenomenon takes place in a pattern that repeats itself every 243 years. It includes two transits that are eight years apart, separated by breaks of 121.5 and 105.5 years. These men, along with a crew of scientists,
1769 Transit of Venus observed from Tahiti measuring the apparent solar parallax between different points on the surface of the Earth. In a 1716 issue of the "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society", Edmund Halley illustrated Gregory's theory more fully and explained further how it could establish the distance between the Earth and the Sun. In his report, Halley suggested places that a full transit should be viewed due to a "cone of visibility." Places he recommended for observing the phenomenon included the Hudson Bay, Norway and the Molucca Islands. The next transits would occur in 1761 and 1769. Halley died in 1742, almost twenty years before