When you want to see the stars, find someplace dark
News from the top
The storm appears to be waning now, the satellite shows that much of it has passed the island. Not long ago the snowplow crews let it be known that they would not reach the summit today, try again tomorrow as the storm abates.
I did a bit of a photo survey of the summit using MastCam to check on the summit conditions. Poliʻahu rules Mauna Kea!
The storm continues unabated atop Mauna Kea. Word from the snowplow crews is bad, deep drifts cover the road above the switchbacks. They are stating that it is unlikely our summit crew will be able to access the telescopes today. That will make the second day in a row with no access.
MastCam is still functioning, only half the dome is covered with ice. I have turned the heater on in an attempt to clear what I can. The view it reveals is deeper snow and a lot more ice. The railings on the dome ladders have coatings many inches thick.
Folks sometimes get a little perturbed when MKSS closes the Mauna Kea summit road. Everyone wants to go up and see the snow. Yes, the road is closed right now, for good reason, there really is no accessible road on the summit at the moment. Not taking my word for it? See for yourself…
The storm is raging at the summit. The wind is howling and freezing fog is coating everything with ice. The webcam images are mostly blocked as ice covers the camera windows, but I can still see out of one side of MastCam towards the Keck 2 dome.
Just received word that our day crew will not attempt the summit, they are leaving HP and headed home. The rangers report snow drifts on the road at fairly low elevations and the snow plow crews will not attempt to clear the roads until the storm abates. Looks like we will lose cooling on some of the instruments as the liquid nitrogen runs out.
It snowed much of yesterday and well into the night. The result? Probably about a foot total at the summit, the Mauna Kea rangers report drifts of up to two feet in places. I am scheduled up top tomorrow, maybe some more photos?
It is snowing pretty hard on the summit of Mauna Kea right now. There were a few inches from the previous days, looks like quite a bit more by tomorrow…
The storm that deposited a heavy layer of ice on Mauna Kea has kept Keck Observatory shuttered for a week now. The last night we observed was New Year’s Day. Despite clear skies, there was just too much ice on the domes that could come crashing in on the telescope if we attempted to open. For a few days the Keck II dome was frozen in place by a pile of solid ice against the lower skirt.
We just got word that day crew, with a little solar help, has cleared the worst of the ice from the domes and we will be observing tonight.
The current conditions at the summit? Heavy ice, freezing fog and 100mph sustained winds with 135mph gusts. The NWS has issued a blizzard warning and OMKM has warned the summit crews to evacuate.
Yes, our day crew abandoned the summit a couple hours ago.
Now at the summit doing a last walk through the facility to insure everything is ready for the storm. A lot of the gear has been turned off to preserve the battery and generator capacity, keeping the network and the key servers operational so we can monitor remotely once everyone leaves.
The winds are picking up, some 60mph gusts along the summit ridge, a little less where Keck sits on the western side. Looking to the east we can see some cloud features that might be the front wall of the oncoming storm.
We plan to depart the summit in another hour and head for home. I expect the drive down to be as clear as the drive up, mostly clear with wild cloud formations over the summits.
So far today we have a hurricane, a 4.2 magnitude earthquake, and the ongoing plague of rodents. Just living in paradise… Anyone for a tsunami?
Wondering what comet C/2012 S1 ISON is looking like today? There is a very good camera aimed at the eastern horizon from the summit of Mauna Kea. Just what you need to take a look for yourself.
The CFHT Cloudcam is a DSLR camera that is programmed to take exposures constantly through the night. Used by the telescope operators to monitor oncoming weather, the camera shows the sky conditions over the eastern coast of the island and the city of Hilo. The images are live during the night, each morning you can load a timelapse video of the entire night.
The camera has quite a following, quite a few people check the camera constantly. This includes quite a few UFO consipracists. If anything odd shows up on the camera the video quickly shows up on YouTube and linked to postings on the UFO sites. When the launch of a missile from Vandenberg AFB in California created a glowing sphere of light these websites went into overdrive with wild speculation.
Most of the mornings this week have been too cloudy to see the comet. I have been checking the video each day. Currently at magnitude 5 the comet will be a small dot in the imagery. As the comet brightens it should appear nicely in Cloudcam.
