Bright Passage
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June 6, 2011 A diagram by James Ferguson shows Venus crossing the face of the Sun in June 1761. Astronomers fanned out around the globe to watch the event, called a transit. They faced such dangers as war, storms, and hostile locals. The goal was to compare observations to determine the distance from Earth to Venus, which in turn would reveal the distance to the Sun. [Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford]
