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
Tahiti explorer Juan Fernández in his expedition of 1576–1577. The next European visitors arrived during the period of intense Anglo-French rivalry that filled the twelve years between the Seven Years' War and the American Revolutionary War . The first European to have visited Tahiti according to existing records was lieutenant Samuel Wallis, who was circumnavigating the globe in , sighting the island on 18 June 1767, and eventually harbouring in Matavai Bay. This bay was situated on the territory of the chiefdom of Pare-Arue, governed by Tu (Tu-nui-e-a'a-i-te-Atua) and his regent Tutaha, and the chiefdom of Ha'apape, governed by Amo and