Everything You Need To Know About the June 5/6 Venus Transit 55
The Bad Astronomer writes "Next week, on June 5/6, there will be the last Venus transit across the face of the Sun until the year 2117. There are dozens of sites issuing press releases about it — online resources, watching live, viewing advice — so I've collected them into a single blog post with tons of links and my own advice on how to observe this (most likely) last-in-a-lifetime event. This complements the previous article on Slashdot from a few weeks ago."
A graphic novel (Score:4, Informative)
A comic pamphlet that explains the historical importance etc...
http://mutha.ncra.tifr.res.in/ncra/for-public/transit-of-venus [tifr.res.in]
Captain Cook did not discover Australia (Score:4, Informative)
Its a common misconception, but the "great southern land" Cook was tasked to find was not Australia -- it was another large continent in the south pacific. Cook criss-crossed the Pacific sufficiently to establish there was not room for another continent to be hiding. Having *not* discovered the great southern land, the next part of his mission was to go map the east coast of Australia. Everyone knew it was there, and had done for hundreds of years. But nobody had any accurate charts. He "charted", did not "discover".