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Mere reflection? Or cause for genuflection?

By Andrew Meacham, Times Staff Writer
In print: Saturday, March 15, 2008

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ADVERTISEMENT [SKIP O'ROURKE | Times] At Tampa Electric Co.’s Big Bend Power Station in Apollo Beach, when the morning light hits this concrete dome, a radiant shape forms. To see it online, go to YouTube.com and search for “TECO Sun Cross.” Related Links Photo gallery: Bay area religious revelations Video: Watch Apollo Beach resident Fred Jacobson's tape Loading Video...

APOLLO BEACH — The questions start shortly after sunrise, when the sun's rays strike a concrete dome at the Tampa Electric Co. plant.

Is it a cross? A star? A man wearing a robe?

Why does it seem to follow passers-by, as if watching them?

These and other questions have percolated in the minds of those who have experienced the TECO Sun Cross.

Fred Jacobsen, the chief archivist and videographer of the phenomenon, says the light in the morning might look like "a robed figure standing with outstretched arms."

The power company isn't conceding anything occult or spiritual in the concrete dome it completed at the southeast Hillsborough County plant in fall 2007. It's used as a place to remove ammonia from the ash of incinerated coal.

It's tempting to reduce all of the buzz about the cross to Jacobsen, 60, who moved to Apollo Beach four years ago from California. It was Jacobsen, after all, who coined the term "TECO Sun Cross" and posted a video of the dome from various angles on YouTube, with the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah playing in the background. Jacobsen made a second video when he discovered a more full-bodied cross in the morning, one that includes the base.

And it's Jacobsen supplying four out of 10 comments on YouTube, countering skeptics with all of the things the star-shaped blob might represent.

But nearly 9,000 hits on his first video suggest Jacobsen is not alone.

As he thought about it and did more Internet searches, the possibilities exploded. Four directions. Four seasons. Four sacred obligations of the Zia Indians, whose four-pointed cross adorns the flag of New Mexico.

The Encyclopedia of Western Signs and Ideograms associates the four-pointed star with "a serious and solemn warning," the Babylonian sun god Shamash and the official emblem of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Jacobsen even found a link to his Norwegian heritage in the Grand Cross of St. Olaf, a steely, four-pointed medallion bestowed on knights.

"All of these things are bound together within the circle of life," he tells YouTube visitors.

Those who want to see the star, or the cross, should remember that power plants are considered critical to national security. Guards wear flak jackets and carry assault rifles "should there be an incident," TECO spokesman Rick Morera said.

A word to the wise: These guards employ a liberal definition of the word "incident." Stopping your car might qualify as one.

"They'll swarm all over you if you stop," Jacobsen said.

Comments about the light formation from YouTube visitors range from surly to accepting.

"Ask yourself if it is true or not, and [if] Jesus does show Himself, will you believe?" a visitor called desirprovocateur wrote. "Or still be skeptical as you are now?"

None of several tourists strolling recently along the elevated walkways at TECO's Manatee Viewing Center next to the plant had heard of the Sun Cross. A few joked about other religious sightings, such as the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich, but none wanted to be quoted.

But Elizabeth Bird, who chairs the anthropology department at the University of South Florida, said it's not unusual for religious adherents — especially Christians — to find symbols in unlikely places.

"Incongruity makes them more powerful," Bird said, "It's like this god is drawing special attention to himself by saying, 'Look, I am here, even in a power plant or a bank or wherever."

But what makes sunlight bounce off the dome that way?

USF physics professor Randy Criss called the phenomenon most likely "a standard property of reflections."

The same formulas that have been around for 300 years should be enough to explain the TECO Sun Cross, Criss said.

"I don't see anything terribly miraculous in there," he said.

Jacobsen says he's not trying to spread religion.

"Some people say, 'That's not Jesus,' " Jacobsen said. "I say, 'I never said it was.'

"But it is there."

Andrew Meacham can be reached at ameacham@sptimes.com or (813) 661-2431.