Hi, my name is Padi Boyd. I'm an astrophysicist here at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and I work on the Transiting
Exoplanet Survey Satellite Mission also known as TESS.
It's really exciting day for us here on planet Earth. Earth and all the planets in our solar system
are orbiting the Sun, our star, in a plane. So that means we're all basically in a flat pancake compared to the Sun and on
the very special days when all the geometry lines up,
We on Earth can watch the planets that are closer to the Sun than us, Venus or Mercury, pass right in front of the face of
the Sun and today's the day for the transit of Mercury.
So, it's definitely very important to never look at the sun with your naked eye. You can do some damage, but we are lucky.
We have all kinds of technology that can help us see this event. One of the best ways to see it will be to go online to
watch the livestream from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, a very powerful solar observatory in space, that's going to see
Mercury transit from the beginning to the end, but also lots of astronomy clubs will have telescopes set up if the
conditions are good. Some science museums will have events so you can go online and see what's happening near you.
You can learn all kinds of additional information about stars and planets by going on @NASASun or @NASAUniverse on
social media.