A line of big telescopes greeted the crowd. Mike had his 20″, Cliff his 24″, my 18″ Deep Violet, later in the evening Olivier set up his 18″ Priscilla. All of this large glass was open to the public, we each had long line of folks waiting a turn at the eyepiece. It was a huge Saturday night crowd, several hundred people awaited darkness. Yes, I had made the decision to observe from the VIS, knowing that there would be a crowd, but wow!
A line of big ‘scopes to greet a huge Saturday crowd at the MKVISLots of folks wondered why there were so many telescopes. Over and over we explained that they were lucky, having chosen the right night to visit the mountain. A Saturday night close to the new moon, with local amateurs bringing their own telescopes to share.
Showpiece objects, the Andromeda Galaxy, The Pleiades and Jupiter were available for viewing. I was stuck on the Orion Nebula all evening long. I changed targets once, to meet a chorus of request to move back to the nebula. I have to admit it was a pretty view, even to me, who has seen this sight more times than I remember. I put the 35mm eyepiece in place, creating a bright low power view that had visitors waiting through line a few times for second and third looks.
In addition to the big dobs there were quite a few smaller ‘scopes present. Maureen had her C-11 setup, Larry brought his nice Stellarvue 102mm refractor, Mike had an 8″ SCT beside his 20″ for use by a friend. Dan didn’t bring a ‘scope, but he did bring pizza! We met Woody, an Alaskan Airlines pilot flying the Anchorage to Kona run. Out of a couple carry-on sized bags he produced more telescope than we would have thought fit in airline luggage…. A neat collapsible pier arrangement with an alt-az mount and a very nice WO 110mm APO.
I have spent quite a few hours lately revamping my observation database. The whole thing had been quite neglected as of late, never being properly updated since I changed over to WordPress on the main blog. The appearance had been left in a halfway state that didn’t match anything, never mind some serious bugs.
Overlayed DSS image of HCG88. These overlays are generated on-the-fly using the object data.In addition to adding all of my recent observations at the telescope, I have redone the style sheets. You can now select white-on-black, black-on-white, or night vision red, just look for the pull-down menu on the object page.
The printable version is still there, a clean black-on-white layout including inverted DSS images for printing. I took a cue from that printed version and kept the other new layouts very clean and uncluttered in appearance.
There is a nearby object section that picks up any close by objects for quick reference. Some attention has been paid to the search routines for better usability.
Those are just the visible changes, much of the work has gone into the back end to improve the quality of the underlying data. The whole thing uses Python and Tk on my local machine, this gets converted to SQL and PHP for the webserver. Most of the tools are automated at this point, and getting less buggy as I hunt down the little issues that I find with use.
I put the whole thing together for my own use, a place to organize my observing notes. But as it is online, anyone can use it. Let me know if you ever find it useful.
Star parties at Hale Pohaku are very informal affairs. You never really know who is and who is not going to show up. We just don’t plan that much.
It had just been too long, I had not had a good night out with the telescope for months. This dark moon Saturday was not going to be missed, I packed up Deep Violet and headed for The Mountain. I knew a few folks would be there, certainly Cliff and Tony. The rest of the folks were a surprise to me. As the evening progressed more and more ‘scopes showed up, a few more familiar voices in the darkness.
Almost all of the big dobsonian telescopes to be found on Hawai’i show up at the VIS for the night.We had picked a decent night. The transparency was fairly good, and the seeing was great. We enjoyed views of Jupiter better than I had seen in quite a while, Probably years. There was the red spot, moon shadows, even the moon Io could be clearly seen transiting the disk.
The only real issue was the wind, it was annoying. A couple of us moved our telescopes into the patio area of the MKVIS, where the building offered some shelter at the expense of blocking some of the sky.
You could always tell when the interferometer was on-sky. Both telescopes would be pointed at the same object, both domes open to the same direction. Any other time you will find each Keck telescope doing its own thing. With the interferometer shut down, it will be an odd night indeed when the telescopes are pointed in the same direction.
Both Keck telescopes observing the same object during the last night of interferometer observing.
Tomorrow morning I will begin to power down the systems. One by one I will open the switches on gear that has rarely been powered off in years. In a matter of minutes it will be off. Dozens of computers, servo drives, camera controllers, racks of gear, silent and dark. I will also shut off the liquid nitrogen to each camera in turn. This will take a bit longer, a couple weeks will be needed to properly warm and back-fill each camera with dry nitrogen for storage. Meanwhile, Brett will carefully cover each optical surface in optical cloth and plastic. A few bits of gear installed in the telescope will be removed to be stored in the basement. By the end of August the Keck Interferometer will be mothballed.
This is the last run, three nights of observations. Two of those are behind us, the third beginning, the end is rapidly approaching.
The FATCAT dichroic beamsplitters in the Keck interferometer beam labI look about at all of the gear and consider the thousands upon thousands of hours it took to assemble, test and troubleshoot this complex scientific instrument. Years of work by so many people. I look about the control room at the racks of equipment, the masses of cabling, the physical results of so much effort. The non-physical likewise represents a staggering amount of work, the software that allows the entire system to operate. My own contribution seems insignificant. Here and there I note pieces of gear I installed, cables run, cards I have modified, and some many parts of the system that I have had to repair across the years. The sense of loss at shutting this system down is overwhelming.
The plan is to carefully mothball the interferometer in place, in such a way as it could be reactivated with a few weeks of work. Maybe, some source of funding might allow the instrument to be used again, that is the hope. But we know how difficult the current budget environment has become.
The Keck Interferometer beam expanders and fast delay linesStill, we are going out in style. This last run has attempted what has never been tried before… We are using AO lasers on both telescopes to reach targets never reachable before. The newly commissioned Keck 1 laser capability making this possible. We have successfully gathered data using the dual laser AO mode, a real first.
Oddly, one of our laser spotters did not make it to the summit and I was obliged to fill in. Fortunately it was a lovely night on the summit, not very cold and with no wind to make it miserable. For a couple hours I relaxed in the Laser Suzan chair, watching the sky. Above me arched the Milky Way, somewhat dimmed by a bright Moon, but still beautiful. A few bright meteors punctuated the night. The scene was a made a bit surreal by three lasers, all targeting the galactic core, the very center of our galaxy. Beside me the camera regularly issued the soft sound of the shutter, taking images of the night.
The second night was a series of galactic targets and a couple AGN’s. The final analysis will take time, but initial indications are that we have good data on at least some of the targets. A couple targets proved too faint for the system to track on. No surprise, we planned to reach a little with this last run.
Thus we begin this last night, the practiced evening routine is complete, final checks done. The last targets a list of selected YSO’s (young stellar objects) to be observed in L-Band. We settle in for the night, hopefully a quiet night. As usual, if I am busy, things are not good. All is going well, a fitting end to the instrument and a testament to all those who have put so much into the system. Something to remember.
Two telescopes set up on the side of Mauna Kea. Olivier’s 12″ and my 18″ Deep Violet. A full night of deep sky observing under very nice conditions.
The photo was taken with a red LED light swept over the area during the 20 seconds of exposure. The camera had other ideas, set for automatic white balance it attempted to correct the color, fairly successfully. Surprising given the monochromatic nature of the light source.
As usual, click on the image for a larger version…
Yes, it is three in the afternoon and I am just waking up. That was the plan.
A night spent under dark Mauna Kea skies with a telescope. It has been much too long since I had a good night out with the ‘scope, it was time. A few items conspired to make it happen… Good weather, a note from the HR department that I was at maximum on accumulated vacation time, use it or lose it! Additionally, my friend and co-worker, Olivier Martin, was looking for a night of observing as well.
With a couple days of approved vacation I headed for the mountain.
A partly cloudy sky greeted us on arrival, high and heavy cirrus hid much of the blue. The forecast was for this to clear off during the first part of the night, not yet time to panic. Not wanting to deal with the crowd at the Mauna Kea VIS we hid out in a spot I found on one of the nearby back roads, a place where we would not be disturbed by any visitors through the night, a place that is completely dark.
Olivier beside his new telescope, a 12" Orion DobsonianOlivier brought his new 12″ Orion Dobsonian. And I do mean new, it was not yet fully assembled! The usual troubles of life had conspired to rob him of any time in the few days since the telescope arrived. He had assembled the main parts, the base and OTA, but had yet to install the elevation bearings, handles, encoders or the primary mirror. Thus we spent the first two hours finishing the telescope, no problem as final assembly gave the heavy cirrus clouds time to clear out.
I was determined to get out and use the telescope during the March new Moon, but had planned to go observing with the guys at Hale Pohaku on Mauna Kea. At the last minute I decided to accept an invitation from the Hilo group to observe from Mauna Loa instead. The guys planned on running a Messier Marathon, something I have enjoyed many times before.
Our usual observing location is Hale Pohaku, at 9,000ft on the south side of Mauna Kea. Hale Pohaku is a great observing site, high enough to be above the clouds, but well below the summit where thin air, wind and frigid temperatures can be miserable. It is impossible to do a complete Messier Marathon from Hale Pohaku, the bulk of Mauna Kea blocks too much of the northern sky making a few objects, most notably M52, difficult to impossible.
The Mauna Loa access road, carved through the lava and paved with red cinder asphaltThe road and climate research station on Mauna Loa sit on the northern face of the mountain, offering a perfect vantage point for the Messier catalog objects given our 20° latutude. The only issue is the road. While Hale Pohaku is reached by six miles of quite nice state highway, Mauna Loa requires navigating an 18 mile drive up a single land paved road. Use of the word “paved” is somewhat casual, as is the maintenance on the road. The first few miles feature new pavement. Beyond that? Not so much, the road becomes a pothole obstacle course. Driving the road with a delicate telescope in the back is rather nerve-wracking.
A hand made GPS clock for the observing tableFor years, when observing, I found myself wanting a clock on my observing table when recording observations. I have used either a wrist watch or a cell phone, but looking at these was uncomfortable as these modern devices use bright backlit LCD displays, not a nice night-vision friendly red. The cell phone also has the additional problem of using up its battery quite quickly when out of range of a digital cell tower at some remote observing site. I needed a simple desk clock for my observing setup.
Accuracy was also a question, accurate time is always important when observing. Asteroid occultations, lunar and solar eclipses, iridium flares, twilight, jovian moon transits, the list of things where accurate time is useful is long in astronomy.
The Specs
Of course being a electrical engineer makes designing and building a clock a fairly trivial exercise. But why stop there? Why not build in a few extra features…
Use red 7-segment LED’s and build in some type of selectable dimming mechanism.
Why bother setting the clock each time you set it up? Make the clock self setting and very accurate.
Since the clock is accurate add a serial port to allow the clock to supply accurate time to a laptop when taking astrophotos.
