"Gordon D. Pusch" wrote in message
...
"Earth Resident" writes:
How did scientists calculate the distance between earth and moon, earth
and sun etc.

Later, more accurate measuremeents of the distance to the Moon used
parallax (change in apparent angle with viewpoint) to determine the
distance through trigonometery,
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~barnes/ASTR110L_S03/lunardist.html;
for a high-school astronomy lab exercise that replicates this method,
see: http://www.math.wisc.edu/~rushton/scopes_kti/northstar/main.html.

When was this?

I forget all the details, but captain cook going to the south pacific/
australia was in part to observe venus going in front of the sun (ie a
transit).

Knowing how far he was from the European observatories, and comparing the
observations of how venus passed in front of the sun gives you an absolute
distance to add to the relative distances you get from orbit data.