Venus of Transit

 As I may have mentioned before, I am especially privy to strange astronomical events.  We headed out to a more remote viewing location in Boulevard out on the 8 to try and avoid any marine layer closer to the ocean.  I must say, it is pretty inspiring to witness what is truly a once-in-a-lifetime event.  This was the June 5th transit, and it won't happen again until the year 2117, isn't that crazy?

One of the guys from the San Diego Astronomical Association had a really cool rear projection set up on his telescope (fitted with a sun lens).

That teeny black dot is the planet Venus moving across the disk of the sun.  If you look closely, you can also see some other small black dots; those are sun spots.

Oh and the title of this post is a nod to my apparent inability to say phrases of words in their correct order.  I also have problems with common phrases and idioms.  It's not actually a real thing, just an idiosyncrasy of mine, I guess :)

Annular Solar Eclipse

 We were fortunate that San Diego had a pretty good view of the annular solar eclipse from May 20, 2012.  An annular eclipse is when the apparent diameter of the moon is not large enough to completely block out the sun.  See?  These are the kinds of things you learn when you date an astrophysicist.

This was a really cool hydrogen alpha telescope that is used only for sun viewing and shows emissions in that bright red.  You could actually see all the solar flares coming off the surface of the sun.

This was a really cool set-up where they projected the image onto a piece of cardboard behind the eyepiece.  The round shadow is where the moon is blocking out the light from the sun.  And if you look really closely you can see that little black speck in the left picture that is actually a sun spot! The picture on the right shows the most that the moon covered the sun during the eclipse.

 And N and I planned ahead with some mango lemonade, London broil sandwiches, and a crossword.  We, however, did not think to pack any chairs since the nature preserve did not really have any benches or anywhere to sit.

All in all, pretty neat event that doesn't come around too often.  Too bad the next total eclipse is only going to be visible in Australia.

P.S. It's Moon Day today!  At least according to some extremely questionable sources a.k.a. my roommate and some website she found.

I made a nerdy video!

Happy Pi Day!   π ♥

I made a video for my immunology class!  Watch and maybe learn something :)



As I've said before, I love crafts+science.

Some background: Macrophages are one of the early defenders against infection in your body.  They phagocytose (or eat up) bacteria and pathogens that they find, like if you get a cut.  When the macrophage realize that your body is harboring foreign fugitives, it does its best to sound the alarm to the rest of your immune system by producing inflammatory cytokines.