gallery – Page 2 – A Darker View

Observatory Still Life Gallery

Often you just need to take note of the small scenes that make up daily life. Over the years I have made an effort to photograph these scenes, there is so much richness in our everyday existence that too many do not notice…

Local Control — I/O cards and field wiring in the Keck 2 local controls PLC

Radio — A handheld radio used at Keck for daily communication.

Breaker — A row of circuit breakers in the Keck 2 computer room

Please Remember to Return Tools — The Nasmyth Deck tool set in the Keck 2 dome

Do Not Operate — An electrician’s tool bag, complete with lockout tag

Azimuth Wrap — The many cables needed to operate the Keck 2 telescope thread through the azimuth wrap.

Tools — A set of tools ready for use on the Keck 1 nasmyth deck

SAA Cabinet — A sample of the control wiring and circuitry in the Servo Amplifier Assembly

Test Leads — Electronics test leads and patch cables hanging from the rack in the Keck summit electronics lab

Interferometer Cabling — A tiny portion of the extensive cabling that connects the various elements of the Keck Interferometer

Telescope Controls — Fuses, relays, and contactors in the Keck 2 telescope control system

Video Amplifier — A distribution video amplifier built around a THS7324

Drills — A pile of power drills await use on a shelf in the supply room

Loose Screws — Bins full of stainless steel machine screws in the supply room

AO Cabling — Multiple cables enter the Keck 2 Adaptive Optics bench.

Scattered Tools — A scatter of tools at CSO

Wiring — A dense bit of temporary wiring in the Keck 2 SAA cabinet

Jacked — A Keck primary mirror segment jacked up out of the array

Part of the Keck 2 logic board, this PCB assembly controls the various control and safety logic for the Keck 2 telescope.

Spooled — Spools of wire await use in the electronics shop

Cooling Lines — The facility cooling lines that supply cold water to the K2AO electronics vault.

Transform — The transformers for the Keck 2 telescope servo drives

Loose Bolts — Bins of bolts in the Keck supply room

New Control — Patching in an experimental control system to move the Keck 1 telescope, one step closer to a major upgrade.

Hose — A pile of 3/8″ air hose in the supply room

Motor Current — Analog ammeters indicate the motor current

TCSU Servers — The new telescope control system servers take up much of a rack

Hard Headed — Hard hats ready for use just outside the Keck 1 dome

Whiffle Tree — A section of the whiffle tree that supports each Keck primary segment

Wire — Racks of wire available for use in the Keck summit electronics lab

Fabrication — Tools and drawing lay on the table in the welding shop

Segment — Looking at the back of a segment with the radial support removed

The Usual Mess — The usual mess littering a workbench in the Keck summit electronics lab in the midst of a project

Hydraulic Controls — The control panel for the telescope hydraulic bearing system pumps

Elevation Wrap — An assortment of cable pass through the Keck 2 telescope elevation cable wrap

Relays — A bank of relays form the safety interlock system for the telescope.

Snow Gallery

This winter has already seen quite a bit of snow atop our tropical summit. It seems appropriate to put together a few recent snow photos…

OLI Hawaii — Recent snowfall atop Hawaiian summits as captured by NASA’s OLI imager aboard Landsat 8 on Dec 25th, 2016

Snow at Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea — A summit covered with snow to greet us on a recent morning up top.

Mauna Kea Blizzard — A snowstorm continues for a second day atop Mauna Kea, December 2, 2016

Fresh Snow — Fresh snow atop Mauna Kea blankets the ground behind Keck

Snow Drifts in Hawaii — Substantial snow drifts in front of the Keck Telescope, December 19, 2016

Heavy Ice — Heavy ice on the weather mast of Keck Observatory, December 19, 2016

A shot from a UKIRT webcam of the Hoku Kea student observatory

Yeah, this is going to be a problem… Eric gives scale to a rather large snowdrift in front of Keck Observatory

No View — The Keck 1 breakroom windows feature the view of the inside of a snowdrift

The MKSS snowplow crews remove snow from in front of Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea

The MKSS snowplow crews remove snow from in front of IRTF Observatory atop Mauna Kea

Deep drifts in front of Keck Observatory cut through by the MKSS snowplow crews

The summit road choked with deep snows — It will be a fair bit of work to clear the road to the summit

The MKSS snowplow crews remove snow from the roads atop Mauna Kea

Loading Snow — Loading pickup trucks with snow for export from the mauna.

Subaru Observatory looms out of the fog and snow

Snow along the road as we approach the summit of Mauna Kea

Mountain Traffic — Winding our way down the mountain with snow day traffic

Plumeria Gallery

Plumeria are by far the prettiest flowers we have in the yard. Along with the four small trees along the front of the house there are two more at the back corner. The back plumeria are more photogenic, with deep yellow centers.

I have photographed our plumeria over and over across the years, it is quite a collection of photos at this point…

Gecko & Plumeria — A gold dust day gecko (Phelsuma laticauda) on a plumeria blossom

Plumeria in the Rain — Plumeria blossoms dampened by rains from Tropical Storm Flossie

An Offering at Keck — A plumeria lei left outside Keck Observatory

Gecko and Plumaria — A gold dust day gecko (Phelsuma laticauda) on a plumeria blossom

WP Plugin Confusion

The world of WordPress plugins is a stew of confusion to a new WordPress user. Thousands of options are available for use with your blog, an amazing array of interesting features to add useful capabilities. From this, you are trying to choose what works for you. You really do need a few plugins to add key features.

For Darker View there a number of things I have determined I need to get working… Spam comment filtering, backup capability, statistics, social site support, threaded comments, and a decent photo gallery. I have the backup utility working now using the very nice WordPress Database Backup by Austin Matzko. Social site functions and statistics from Jetpack work smoothly.

The latest experiments center around getting a decent gallery function integrated. Two options appear to be worth considering… NextGEN Gallery seems to be the standard, but I had read that it was flash based, and I want things to work on an iOS device. In a later experiment I found that it does work on my iPad, so it is back on the list.

In the meantime I have experimented with DM Albums. This is a straightforward plugin with a decent interface. Just load the photos and put a single tag into the post. I like the effect, it seems to play well with my theme. The result is a nicely functional gallery.

DM Albums does have some sizing issues in the full screen mode, pretty annoying issues. The package has seen very active development lately, with two major releases already this year as they clean up the bugs and get everything working. Thus I am not giving up on this package just yet.

This issue is not done yet, I am just out of time to play with it for now.

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