 Hello citizens of Earth, it's me, Jared, and welcome to Station 204. Now we did not have a Space News episode this week, but there is something very special happening on Monday that only occurs a few times every century, so we thought we would give you a heads up and also how you can view this very special event. A transit is an astronomical phenomenon where a celestial body passes between a larger body and the observer. Some of you may recall the spectacular 2012 Transit of Venus, a fantastic example of this, but the next Venus transit isn't until 2117. But if you're in need of a transit fix, you're in luck. This Monday we'll be having a transit of Mercury. The last transit of Mercury was in 2016, and we're quite lucky that we get on average about 13 transits of Mercury per century. So what should you expect to see? Well, as was mentioned in the song King of Pain, you'll be seeing quite literally a little black spot on the sun. Of course, it's going to move across the disk of the sun over the course of just under five and a half hours. Now Mercury is quite small, it's got an average diameter of 4,880 kilometers, and it will be roughly 47 million kilometers away at the time of the transit. So how do you observe the transit? Well, first and foremost, do not, I repeat. Do not look at the sun directly under any circumstances, okay? That's just like outright, don't ever do that no matter what the internet tells you. Just don't do it. Now a lot of folks falsely believe you can put on sunglasses and be able to observe the sun directly, and that's wrong as well. Now it does cut down on the amount of visible light from the sun, most certainly not enough for just the visible light alone to not damage your eyes, it still will. Even worse, it will cause your pupils in your eyes to dilate, and then it will allow UV ultra-violet light into your eyes because they're dilated, they're going to get more in there and your eyes will actually get more damaged by looking with sunglasses than it would if you just decided to look at the sun regularly. Either way, you shouldn't be doing that. However, if you've got Eclipse glasses, that'll work perfectly, and Mercury, even with its small size and large distance away from us, you will still be able to make it out against the disc of the sun. Now if you've got a pair of Eclipse glasses, like me, left over from the 2017 total solar eclipse we had here in the United States, those are still good, but remember, Eclipse glasses, they have a usable life of about three years, so you may need to get a new pair. Solar filters are the only way you can safely observe the transit of Mercury with a telescope or binoculars. Obviously do not, under any circumstances, look directly through a telescope or a pair of binoculars without filters. You will permanently lose your eyesight instantly. You have to have those solar filters on there if you want to use those. If you don't have solar filters, don't use your telescope and don't use your binoculars. Now a lot of folks will say that you can use your telescope and binoculars, just don't look through it. You can project an image of the transit through your telescope by having something like a piece of paper at a specific set distance from the back of the optics, but I'm a little bit leery of this technique as it leaves the potential for an inexperienced observer to try an attempt to look directly through the telescope. I also want to discourage any of you who think that you are going to be able to use welding glass in order to be able to observe the transit. Now I've seen a lot of reputable sources say that you can use welding glass to observe the sun, but I've also seen as many reputable sources say that you can't use welding glass to safely observe the sun. So in my opinion, because there is zero consensus as to whether welding glass is safe or not to observe the sun, just don't use it. Now outside of observation of the transit and just how cool it looks, why should anyone really care about them? Well us astronomers, we use transits to check our measurement abilities for things like say the distance to Mercury and also to see if there's been any minor changes to the radius of the sun. We also get a chance to hone in the systems that we use to hunt for exoplanets as our most mature technique is currently using the dip of light when an exoplanet transits its star relative to our observation position. Now if you're in Europe or Africa, you'll be able to see the start of the transit but not the end. Those of you on the east coast of the United States and all of South America will catch the full transit and the rest of us in North America will miss the start, but catch the end of the transit. Unfortunately Asia and Australia, I'm very sorry you won't be able to see the transit live, but hey you'll get to see the next transit which is in 2032. The transit of Mercury will start at 1235 universal time, it will reach its maximum it will be its furthest into the sun at 1520 universal time and then it will wrap up, slide off of the sun and back into the sky at 1804 universal time. And if you can't view the transit of Mercury yourself because of where you are on the earth, you've got a lack of equipment or you're just going to be like busy and you're going to be at your desk or something during that time, you can jump online and watch a couple of streams somewhere. Groups like SLU, the virtual telescope project, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory will update images throughout the transit so that you can see it. And even though it's probably a conflict of interest or whatever to bring this up, my place I work at, Griffith Observatory, yep we're going to be streaming it too. And you should watch Griffith Stream because I'm telling you to. And now that you know a little bit about this upcoming transit of Mercury and how to safely observe it, we want to give a huge shout out to all of our citizens of tomorrow. Now without your help we wouldn't be able to make any of this possible. No news, no interview, no letting off steam. So if you got something from us and you would like to give something back, you can head on over to youtube.com slash tmro slash join. You can also head on over to community.tmro.tv to find other ways to help as well. And as always, hitting that subscribe and notification button, which you definitely want to hit that notification button because we're going to be doing a lot of letting off steams coming up, also liking our videos, sharing your videos and getting us in front of as many of your friends and family as possible helps us pursue the core of our mission, which is to get everyone excited about space. And that wraps up this special Mercury transit edition of Space News. We're going to return to our regular schedule this upcoming week, so never fear. We will be back to tell you everything you've ever wanted to know about what's happening in the universe. So until the next time, keep exploring.