Mercury Rising

Last night I tuned in to a live webcast of the Transit of Mercury. It was kind of neat in a "I've never seen that planet live before" kind of way. Luckily for you, the videos at the latter link above are timelapsed. Here are some captures that I made from the broadcast. Due to the heavy server load, the connection was pretty flaky.

To me, the most fascinating thing about the event is that scientists were able to predict the exact minute that it would start and end, and to simulate it perfectly before it even happened! I wonder what kind of coordinate system they use to model solar orbits. Surely the sun must be at the origin...

Anyway, just thought I'd share. Nothing else happened of interest yesterday...except for Rummy resigning and the blue team capturing the flag again, of course. The cynic in me wants to wait for this news to actually affect anything before celebrating.