But the transit of Venus is one of them, because this is the last time it's gonna happen in my lifetime.

So I don't have to worry about this becoming a regular thing.

My way to see the transit of Venus.

Okay, so the transit is probably starting right now.

This is probably contact.

One.

It's 8 16 AM in Sydney.

My first love, she can't see it.

It's like a black dog.

That's Venus Beautiful.

The sun is now out, and with these silly glasses, you can actually see Venus on the sun.

Now it is.

I imagine most people don't get excited about Venus passing in front of the sun.

I mean, what's the big deal?

But in the old days, it was a really important event because it allowed us to determine the scale of our solar system and then the scale of the universe.

Astronomers at the time knew the relative distances between the planets because of Kepler's laws that could calculate the ratios of the different Rady I of the orbits of planets.

But unfortunately they didn't have any absolute measure.

So they couldn't really say how far anything was from anything else.

Edmund Hayley.

The guy who the comments named after was the one who suggested that by timing how long it takes Venus to pass across the face of the sun from different points on the earth would allow us to measure the distance between the Earth and the sun.

That's using something called Parallax.

Now to illustrate Parallax, I've actually kind of set up a solar system in my kitchen and living room so you can see the sun there behind me.

This is Venus.

And over here we have the Earth.

Oh, sorry, guys.

I gotta take this.

It's destined from smarter every day.

Aaron, you know what's going on with some space and rocket center?

We got time.

She said we could calculate.

This is Ah, yeah, because we're on opposite sides of the globe.

We're gonna compare times and calculate the distance of the sun.

My time was six hours, 28 minutes and four seconds in Sydney.

Okay.

What time you get 6 28 04 Right?

6 28 Before that's May.

My mind was six hours 45 minutes and 36 seconds.

A bit longer.

All right, So do I just go put it on a calculator?

What?

Yeah, let's do that.

All right.

Sounds good.

All right, Doctor.

So the plan is I'm going to shoot from the earth from the top of the earth and see what it looks like when I make a transit of Venus across the face of the sun.

And then I'm gonna change my perspective slightly, so I'm gonna go to a lower part of the earth and I'm gonna shoot the same thing.

And then I wanna overlay those two images to see how Venus looks as its tracking across the sun from those two different locations.

It should trace out two separate cords across the face of the sun.

And that is what allows us to estimate the distance to Venus and the distance to the sun and everything else in the solar system.

Because once we have one absolute distance, we could get all of the distances.

So 243 years ago, Captain Cook was down here sent to Tahiti to observe the transit of Venus, and after that he opened his sealed papers with his secret mission.

He was meant to find the great Southern land and claim it for Britain, which is what he did.

He mapped and explore the coasts of New Zealand and Australia before returning home.

This was his first voyage to the South Pacific.

So pretty exciting And then, I guess, kind of a related note.

Eight years ago when this transit was taking place, I was actually in the air over the Pacific, flying from Vancouver to Sydney.

Thio make my life here.

So you know me and cook.

We got something in common, I guess.

You know it's destiny calling back to the distance.

What's going on?

It's like you in the morning here.

Something new.

It's 93 million miles.

93 million.

Not I don't think that's a unit, is it Miles?

They got rid of that like 100 years ago.

Wow, that's I wanted Kilometers.

How far is it?

It's about 149 and 1/2 change 1,000,000 kilometres.

So that's awesome.

It's like bang on.

That is one astronomical unit.

So good observing, sir.

Well done.

Thank you very much.

Oh, there was a by the way.

There was a kid there today.

We did it in the U S.

Space and rocket center under the Saturn five.

But there was a kid there that made his own telescope out of PVC pipe.

That's awesome, man.

I wish I could make a telescope at a PVC pipe.

Wow.

I want to check that out.

So I'm gonna put an annotation over to that video of Destined.

So So click on the iPhone here.

If you want to go see Destin's video where you can make your own telescope, but a PVC Yeah.

Yeah.

Why that he d'oh.

Click on it.

All right.

You better get to bed, you know, going crazy.

Yeah, I need some sleep, so I'll let you go.

All right?

You got to let it have a good night.