Martin Hendry

Professor, University of Glasgow

Captain Cook and the Cosmic Yardstick

June 2012 will witness a transit of Venus, when for a few brief hours the planet will appear to cross the Sun's disk. This extremely rare astronomical event has an illustrious history: in 1769 a transit of Venus, observed by astronomers across the world, helped us determine for the first time the distance from the Earth to the Sun. This lecture charts the story of how we measured this cosmic yardstick, and looks ahead to the 2012 transit.