Mercury, transiting

Tomorrow, May 7, the planet Mercury (the little one closest to the sun) will pass across the face of the sun (from our perspective) for the first time since 1999. Beginning at 1:13 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, or 5:13 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), observers with properly shielded telescopes in Europe, Asia and Africa will try to catch a glimpse of the tiny planet as it crosses. Observers without such telescopes can still watch online via SOHO, The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, a joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency. Speaking of joint efforts, we in the U.S. owe a heartfelt SPACEBO BOLSHOI (thank you very much) to the Russian Space Agency for giving our astronauts a lift home from the International Space Station on the aptly named Soyuz (union) spacecraft.