When you want to see the stars, find someplace dark
Photos from the top
When heading to Waimea this time of year, I am driving right at sunrise. Sometimes you just have to stop and take the photo, or in this case a full set of photos for a panorama, even if I risk being late for the truck to the summit… (Click image to view properly)
Regular snowfall has accumulated at the summit. It is patchy, the wind sweeping the snow off the slopes, creating substantial drifts behind buildings and against guardrails. If you want to sled or snowboard, some of the north slopes have a bit of accumulation. Try the small bowl between Keck and Subaru. Need to have a white Christmas in Hawai’i, we can provide this year…
A light snowfall delayed our arrival at the summit this morning. It was really only a few inches, but as usual it drifted into all the wrong places. Thus ice and drifts on the road meant we were waiting for the snowplows to break through.
Waiting was no problem, the Sun was out, creating a very pretty mountain. Olivier and I walked up to Keck from below Subaru as the snowplow cleared the last bit of road. We both had cameras in hand, enjoying the scenery. Not a lot of snow, but a fair amount of ice on any exposed surface. A few days before Christmas it all seemed appropriate.
After a quick job in the AO bench we needed to wait for some adhesive to cure. I ended up joining in with the snow shovel crew, clearing our doors and walkways of small drifts. Shoveling snow is not easy at nearly 14,000ft. Breathing hard, but having fun…
As winter descends on Mauna Kea, commuting to and from the summit had become… interesting. Fog, snow and ice being regular features of the drive. Winter weather has also brought fantastic cloud formations, all the more interesting as you drive into them. The later dawn and earlier sunset means that our usual arrival and departure times are filled with dramatic light. All elements become part of a spectacular show.
Assembling panoramas properly is not a trivial exercise. I have been attempting to master a program called Hugin and may have achieved some modest level of competency with it. It is surprising complex, and extraordinary powerful. Even more impressive as it is free software. Properly mastered it allows correction of tip, tilt and yaw in the camera, lens distortion, even translation of the camera’s position in x,y, and z. The task is made even more complex if the scene changes during the sequence, which is inevitable during the fifteen minutes it takes to sweep a moonlit scene on the observatory roof with one minute exposures. The stars move, the telescopes move, while I try not to shiver uncontrollably in the bitter wind.
Driving Saddle Road provides endlessly beautiful vistas. Every day the clouds and light are different. I never seem to tire of this road. Even when retuning home tired, the scenery is worth watching…
We were doing more engineering tests with the K1 laser Sunday night. And as usual, Dan Birchall, working the night over at Subaru, took advantage of the opportunity to do some time lapse photography. Enjoy…
No, not produced by me. But a bit of video Keck & NSF commissioned to use in public venues. I have seen it a number of times, but recently stumbled over a copy posted to Vimeo. Just had to share…
Keck Observatory with soundtrack by Big Empty FieldWaimea is a place of rainbows. So common are they here it is a rare day that goes by without at least one rainbow.
But what does a rainbow look like at sunset? When the Sun’s light is reddened by passage through so much air and haze. The bow will begin to lose all color except for red, this creates a red bow…
Walking through the room I somehow fail to notice just how much equipment is there. At night, with the lights off, the sheer quantity of LED’s and other indicator lights underscore the number of servers and other equipment the room contains. Every direction you look, the room is filled with equipment… The telescope control computer, network switches, terminal servers, instrument servers, the ACS controller and the telescope drive system itself. All necessary to keeping the telescope on-sky…
