Point Venus Lighthouse: Memorial to an Antipodean Astronomical Observation

French Polynesia, for all its idyllic beauty and South Seas charm, doesn't seem like a place where cutting-edge science would have been practiced in the 1700s. Like most island paradises, its tranquil, stress-free, untroubled shores beckon those who wish to languish and forget life's serious side. Yet, on the northern extremity of the island of Tahiti-a landscape where Gauguin painted dark-eyed girls with flowers in their hair, where Jack London spent nights in revelry and penned South Seas Tales, and Marlon Brando napped in a hammock strung between palm trees-a historic astronomical observation was made in 1769 that forever changed our view of the cosmos.