Endeavour Expedition Observed Venus Transit

In 1768, British navigator James Cook commanded HMS Endeavour on a Royal Navy and Royal Society expedition to Tahiti to observe the 1769 transit of Venus and help determine the distance between Earth and the Sun. On June 3, 1769, Cook, British naturalist Joseph Banks, British astronomer Charles Green, and Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander recorded Venus crossing the Sun. Cook then followed secret orders to search the South Pacific for the supposed continent Terra Australis Incognita. Calculations from the wider 1769 observation effort estimated the Earth-Sun distance within 0.8 percent of the modern value.

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