"Reanimating the Transit of Venus" -- actual event, or the title of a bad sci-fi novel? This time, the former: astronomers at California's Lick Observatory {your puerile pun here} found a series of photo plates from 1882 taken of the transit of Venus across the sun, and like all true geeks must, turned them into a Quicktime movie. The transit is a rare alignment of the planets -- it famously was the reason Captain Cook was commissioned to sail to the South Pacific, where he explored Australia, New Zealand and Polynesia, and somewhat accidentally "discovered" Sydney Harbour. The transit will next occur in about eight weeks.