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[Akura]

According to my mother, Mercury will pass in front of the sun today, starting in about half an hour from now and lasting most of the day, and visible on the US East Coast. She also said you'd need a telescope or binoculars to see it.

...Great idea, Mom. Point a scope directly at the sun and stare at it for a few hours .

[TheBiggerFish]

That pinhole thing for solar eclipses is a thing?

[Arx]

Much better: point a telescope at the sun and direct the beam from the end onto a page.

[Starver]

Binoculars tinted to near opaqueness should work.

Warning!!!
Don't do this slap-dash! Don't rely on candle-soot coating your lens/impromptu glass filter evenly/thoroughly enough! Do not use eclipse filters (or welding goggles) at the eye-side of the magnifying lens, where the focussed-down sunlight could burn through the protection you think you have! Do not make it possible for the (sun-side) specialust filter to fall off its perch!

Look,  just get an official webcam view from a solar observatory, if you can't trust yourself to put together a solar observatory of your own. There's more spectacular things you'll want to see in the future, and the next transit is also well within the lifetime of most people here, I would hope...

ETA: November 11, 2019 is the next one.  You've got 42 months to spare,  and prepare.

[mainiac]

Cool website:
http://www.asterank.com/

[Wolfhunter107]

Opportunity gets another mission extension.

It's been around for twelve and a half years, now, which is absolutely incredible, if you think about it.

[Culise]

Opportunity gets another mission extension.

It's been around for twelve and a half years, now, which is absolutely incredible, if you think about it.

It's definitely not bad for a three-month tour.

[Gentlefish]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

Now that is sad.

[LordBaal]

Someday, maybe our children's or our grandchildren perhaps will see how people get there, and build a historical place around it, and it will never bee alone again. I expect the same for the eagle module and the first footprint on the moon.

[Starver]

Surrounded with a velvet rope.

(On the Moon, perhaps a double-dome.  The outside to keep the air in, for the visitors, the inside to keep the air out, for the artefacts.)

ETA: Talking of extended-mission rovers and the Moon, did I link this here yet?

http://www.sciencealert.com/china-s-jade-rabbit-rover-finally-died-after-31-months-on-the-moon

[origamiscienceguy]

[Reelya]

http://www.seeker.com/new-nearby-earth-like-planet-discovered-1970197349.html

A new exoplanet has been discovered. "So what?" you say. Well, this exoplanet is:

- orbiting Proxima Centauri 4.25 light years away
- "Earth-like"
- In the habitable zone

In other words it's the best bet yet for a potentially life-bearing or colonizable planet that could be reached by a mission within a single lifetime.

[mainiac]

That is quite surprising.  I guess this means earthlike planets are probably really common?

[Culise]

That is quite surprising.  I guess this means earthlike planets are probably really common?

Well, it does depend to some degree on what "Earth-like" refers to.  Venus and Mars are both Earth-like, if you only take the knowledge about that world we presently know about this one (orbital distance, planetary mass, planetary radius).  Even if we do infer from our present limited sample set that such planets are common (at least, until we get enough data to make a more conclusive estimate one way or the other), all it demonstrates is that terrestrial planets can easily exist between 0.5-3 AU from a G-type main-sequence star.