Hawai'i

My inverted shadow photo is featured on the Optics Picture of the Day. OPOD is part of the fantastic Atmospheric Optics website, the web's go-to source for explanations of rainbows, halos, arcs and all other manner of atmospheric phenomena. You may have found this site before if you have followed some of the explanatory links in back posts here on DV.

The shadow of Mauna Kea over Hualalai, photo processed to accentuate the countershadow in the clouds above

Hakalau is holding their annual open house on Oct. 16th, 2010. Den and I attended this event last year and greatly enjoyed it, I hope we can do it again, we didn't get to see everything last year.

The refuge is a little glimpse into the ancient native forests that once covered the entire eastern slope of Mauna Kea. In the shade of enormous Koa and Ohia, native plants thrive. The woods are alive with the songs of native birds whose presence is revealed in flashes of bright red and yellow. It may take an hour of bumping down the rugged Mana road to get there, but it is worth it.

Ancient koa (Acacia koa) and ōhiʻa (Metrosideros polymorpha) trees in the fog at Hakalau NWR

Join us in celebrating our 25th Anniversary and National Wildlife Refuge Week at Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge Saturday, October 16, 2010

You are invited to attend an Open House at Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge (Hilo, HI) on October 16, 2010. Guided rainforest hikes will be offered between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. to observe rare and colorful native birds and plants and to learn about refuge management practices. You will also have the option to tour a 115-year-old koa cabin and the refuge greenhouse. Hiking times will vary from 30 minutes to 3 hours according to your interests.

Visitors must provide their own four-wheel-drive transportation to the Refuge, which is a two-hour drive from Hilo, Waimea or Kona. Reservations are required and may be obtained by calling the refuge office in Hilo at 443-2300 by Wednesday, October 13th. A map, directions and additional information will be mailed to all participants.

With the new computer on-line it is time to start putting together a few video projects I have had sitting around. The first out of the que is Flowing Rock, a compilation of recent video taken at the front of the active flows at Kalapana.

The flowing lava is endlessly fascinating to watch. While is was impressive standing there, it is almost more so in the video. Often some of the motion was hard to notice when seen first hand, but in the sped-up video all sorts of movement becomes visible. This is particularly true of the inflation of the pillows seen behind the moving front. Putting together this piece I watched parts of the video over and over, It is still fascinating to watch.

The video in the various sequences is accelerated anywhere from 2-5x in order to show the fascinating motion of the lava. Some of the frames look pretty scary when I realize that I was standing just a few feet in front of flowing lava. Reality was not as scary, the lava was moving quite slowly compared to what is shown in the video.

Enjoy...

Flowing Rock from Andrew Cooper on Vimeo.