Washington, if you need to get the election out of your system, why not get in touch with your inner science geek? As reported on NPR yesterday, the planet Mercury will make a relatively rare transit of the sun today. If you can find a (miraculously rain-and-cloud-free) place to watch safely today, from 2:12 p.m. until sunset, you will be able to see the little black dot of Mercury, among a lot of fainter black dots, glide across the sun’s surface. It will take about five hours and will not happen again until 2016. Although we will not be able to see the whole transit here in Washington, you can observe Mercury at deepest transit, around 4:41 p.m.

Please, folks, do not go outside and look directly at the sun. And, knuckleheads, especially do not look directly at the sun through a telescope or binoculars without special protection. You can burn a permanent blind spot on your retina. If you would like to watch the Transit of Mercury with some professional help, you could go to one of these public events today:

>> Astronomers at the University of Maryland have canceled the scheduled public viewing at McKeldin Mall on the College Park campus, because today’s weather is not going to the best for observing the sky. They are advising people to watch one of several live Webcasts. If the weather clears, they may change their minds.

>> Not cowed by the weather, Montgomery College plans to hold its public viewing event, rain or shine, at the King Street parking garage of the Takoma Park/Silver Spring campus, from 2 to 5 p.m. If the weather is clear, by some miracle, they will watch the transit from the roof, but if it is rainy, they will watch on a computer set up on the first floor.

>> For the truly nerdy, it must be the live NASA Webcast with scientists at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt and NASA Langley (1:30 to 2:30 p.m.).

If the weather clears, is anyone out there planning to watch this event and who knows what they are doing?