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 vast international endeavor. Even though the Seven Years' War was going on between Great Britain and France, the British Admiralty granted safe passage for French astronomer, Alexandre Guy Pingré on his way to view the 1761 transit. During Cook's journey to Tahiti, the French government instructed all its men-of-war not to harm the "Endeavour", since it was ‘out on enterprises of service to all mankind'. With the Venus Transits, astronomers of the eighteenth century illustrated unity in the scientific community. The entente, however, passed by noted astronomers and surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, who were attacked by the French,