And on Friday, I will be joined by DNews cameraman Alex Gerhard to fly to Chile to visit the ESO sitesbeing given exclusive access to the telescopes and their observation sites high in the Atacama Desert. Why next week? Well, the transit of Mercury occurs on May 9 and we'll be there watching the celestial dance from a region that is, frankly,

Personally, I've seen many telescopes in my time, this will be a trip of a lifetime. I've covered the incredible science from the ESO telescopes for Discovery News (and Discovery News alum Nicole Gugliucci even visited ALMA in 2013 —  so I'm excited to not only see these monuments of human ingenuity up-close, but to also talk to the people who carry out the mind-blowing research. And there's a Mercury transit to boot — not bad!