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sellers. Welcome to the Scientific American

Podcast Science Talk posted on May 30th, 2012. I'm Steve Merski. On June 5th or 6th, depending on where

you are, you'll have the rare chance to see a transit of the planet Venus. Your next shot after this one's going to be the

year 2117, so good luck with that. With the transit coming up, I called Mark Anderson. He's the author

of the book The Day of the World discovered the Sun about the great efforts to track the transits

of Venus in the 1760s. Back then, it was less celestial sightseeing and more hard science.

Here's part one of my phone conversation with Mark.

Mark Anderson, great to talk to you today.

Thank you for having me, Steve.

It's my pleasure. It's a fascinating book, The Day the World Discovered the Sun.

It has a certain literary sensibility to it, which I think is great.

You want to talk a little bit about your background because you bring a style that's maybe just a little unusual for a science book?

Well, my book, first and foremost, I wanted it to be the story, this amazing adventure

that is combining both the science, the cutting-edge science, and the incredible stories,

these odyses that these explorers and scientists, you know, underwent

to really cross much of the planet to find the distance to the sun and many other things

as well.

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