Mercury pass in front of the Sun

On Nov. 08th, as some might be aware, Mercury passed between the Sun and Earth. The event repeats around 16 years, and this year it could be seen fairly clear from 19:00GMT to 0:00GMT. Some people from the Physics department at FSU set up some telescopes to see the event. Normally you can't see directly to the Sun, so in order to watch the pass of Mercury the light had to be projected onto a surface. The Sun is seen as large white (light) and Mercury is just a small dot because of the shadow it produces.
The following image, courtesy of Ken Ford, was taken from the projection of one of the telescopes. As you may notice the size of Mercury compared to the Sun is insignificant (Diameter: 4879 KM vs 1.392×10^6 km), and it takes about 5 hours to move from one side of the sun to the other.



I modified the original image to increase the contrast and reduce the brightness so that the little dot of Mercury could be seen, in the original image you can barely see the planet due to it's size and the brightness from the Sun.

Trip to Tampa

** WARNING RAMBLING AHEAD **

One of my best friends from Ecuador, Esteban, is getting married on Dec. and considering that the first days on Nov. are a holiday in Ecuador, decided to go with his girlfriend to meet her brother. Since going to Tampa is not that long (is what I thought) I decided to also go for a couple of days. My original plan was to get my driver license on Friday and drive all the way, but the plan had to be changed since I had lots of work pending and wanted to use all day for that. At the end, I took a bus on Sat. at 5am, it took about 6 hours to get to Tampa, I really didn't noticed much of the way since I went sleeping more than half of the time, but my body was complaining for being sitting for more than 6 hours.

When I got to Tampa I called my friend and he told me they were at Busch Gardens Africa, so I went to the nearest bus station and took the bus that would drop me off right in front of the park. Tough luck, I got to the bus station a few minutes after the bus left, and since it was a Sat. the buses didn't run as often as the weekdays (as usual), so I had to wait at the station for some good 30 - 40 minutes. Finally I got to the park around 2pm and met with my friend.

Since I was kid I had this kind of trauma with roller coasters because of an stupid simulator, and for pretty much all my life I haven't been able to ride a roller coaster, not a serious one at least. In fact last time I was to Busch Gardens (and I was around 15 years old, which means you are unaware of danger) I didn't ride any of the roller coasters and stayed outside waiting for the rest of my family. This time though, Esteban pretty much dragged me to Sheikra. While in the line I started to feel sick already, and was really about to drop out but I hold myself up until it was just not possible to go back and tried to think and convince myself that these things are safe, they make everything so that nothing will happen.

The ride started with a steep 45 degrees climb to 200ft where you get an amazing view of the city and all the park, in particular, because of the time we were riding it, there was a gorgeous sunset, my thoughts were focusing on how ironic that nice view was before hanging you from a 90 degree slope which pretty much made you feel you were about to die... Then, there was that perfect comment for a situation like that "look how tiny all the other coasters look from here", that almost made me pass out, but I decided not to look down (too much) and in fact, before getting hung, I just closed my eyes and hold to the locks as hard as I could, about 3 seconds later, I was just feeling... hmmm... I really can't tell what it really feels like, but I was pretty much petrified, after the first fall though, I was able to start screaming and some of the feeling went away with that. I really can't tell much about the ride except that it didn't really felt like 3 minutes, was much shorter and the fear was kinda gone. When I got out of the train my legs were still shaking and I was just trying to get myself back into one piece.

After that we went to ride Kumba, and the experience was a lot better, same when we went for Gwazi, which in fact, I enjoyed it. At the end, I'm glad I did rode the coasters, is something I wasn't able to do for a long time, and getting those kind of fears away is always good. I do kinda regret I wasn't able to fight that fear before, I might have enjoyed some other times where I had chances to ride coasters and didn't, so I guess now I should start making up for those...

After the day at Busch Gardens was over, I met with my good friend Bing who drove to Tampa for the weekend as well. We had planed to try go planespoting some time, but unfortunately we couldn't do that this weekend. What we did was go on Sat. night to a goth club called The Castle in Ybor. It was the first time I went to a goth club and it was a very interesting experience. The music is just great, and see all the customs and how much work some people actually put to get there is amazing.

We left the place around 3am and got back home. When I got there I just fell dead on the bed until next day, which was pretty much calm, which I'm glad cause I didn't had much energy from the previous day. I took the bus back to Tally at 5pm and got here around midnight.

AS I said before, unfortunately we didn't had a chance to go planespot, any time, I haven't done that before, and even that I'm not that into planes as Bing, I think I can get some really nice shots from those beasts, I've seen some of the pictures other people have taken, and are really impressive, so hopefully that will be done next time I'm around.

And so... the rambling about Tampa is over... good night :)