100 Year Event: Transit of Venus Across the Face of the Sun

[MacGuffin]

On Tuesday, Venus will move across the Sun and appear as a small black dot.

Transits of Venus are among the rarest of predictable celestial phenomena and occur in pairs eight years apart: the previous transit was in June 2004, and the next pair of transits will occur in December 2117 and December 2125.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Venus,_2012

 

[Mole]

Lieutenant Cook was sent to the South Pacific to observe the transit of Venus across the face of the Sun in 1769.

And when the Lieutenant had finished this quintessential Enlightenment observation, he opened his sealed orders from the Admiralty.

And his orders were to discover the Great South Land, Australia.