With the heat index expected to surpass 100 degrees tomorrow and Wednesday, D.C. will pick up trash early and keep pools open late.

It’s so hot that we’re melting the record books!

Yesterday brought the Transit of Venus, in which the second planet in our solar system passed directly between Earth and the Sun. Some of DCist’s contributing photographers waited out cloudy skies and captured some truly stellar images of this rare celestial event

Today at 6 p.m., stargazers will be able to watch a rare celestial event. And we strongly recommend you join in the fun, because the Transit of Venus won’t happen again for more than a century.

Tomorrow, beginning at 5:04 a.m. eastern standard time, the tilt of the Earth’s axis will be situation neither away from nor towards the Sun, marking the autumn equinox and the beginning of fall. And while that’s pretty neat in and of itself, it’s the yearly D.C. Henge event that really has us excited.

We’ve already experienced ten days over 90 degrees in Washington, D.C. this year, so it’s hard to believe summer hasn’t even started yet. Next Tuesday marks the summer solstice for the northern hemisphere, as Earth reaches the point in its orbit where its tilt edges us closest to the sun.

Our resident astronomy expert is out for the week, so you’ll have to depend on the government for the technical explanation of what this huge explosion on the sun actually means. (It involves a Solar Radiation Storm and CME-driven shock, both of which sound, uh, kind of terrifying.)

Image courtesy NASA’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory The Earth travels around the Sun at a brisk 18 miles per second. At the same time, the Sun, dragging the solar system with it, orbits around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy at around 155 miles per second. The Milky Way orbits within our Local Group, which is being pulled by the gravity of the massive Virgo Cluster. And finally, we move relative to the…