When you want to see the stars, find someplace dark
Exploring the cosmos
All day the storm atop our mountain continued. As we watched in the cameras the snow fell heavily, often so thick nearby structures disappeared into the white. Unlike yesterday the winds have eased, the snow quickly accumulates where it falls instead of drifting against the structures. As we watch through the day things began to vanish, railings and guardrails buried in the snow.
Observing is, of course, cancelled.
With the first of December winter arrived on Mauna Kea.
I was scheduled to go up today and arrived in Waimea well before 7am to meet the vehicles. The plan was to spend the day in Keck 2 AO dealing with an optical stage that needed adjustment.
Eric greeted me with an advisory, “If you do not need to go… Don’t”. He had obviously checked the morning reports, something I had not yet done. We pulled up a computer inside and looked at the webcams… Yeah, no need to sit at Hale Pohaku all day waiting for the snowplows. I will stay at HQ for the day, the adjustment can wait.
We have been through weeks of the TMT permit contested case hearings at this point, with no end in sight. I have often kept the live feed in the corner of my computer screen through the day.
Other petitioners seem unable or unwilling to understand repeated instructions from the hearing officer. At least most of the grandstanding has settled down as it became apparent that it would not be tolerated in the hearing room and that Judge Amano would evict those who repeatedly disrupted proceedings.
A Celestron FirstScope in need of eyepieces. Time to find a couple inexpensive eyepieces. With the telescope destined for an eight year old girl I really did not expect the eyepieces to live up to any demanding standards. But neither do I want the views to be truly horrible either, it would be nice if the telescope is properly enjoyable.
As the eBay sale is from a US seller the eyepieces arrive in just a few days. Unpacking the eyepieces is the first pleasant surprise… The quality is not bad, metal barrels, decently molded rubber bits, decent looking glass. An ebay sale often a bit of a gamble, but this does not look bad at all.
I tend to end up with telescopes, they just appear on a semi-regular basis, given to me with the instructions to find a home for them. One of the latest additions to Andrew’s Home for Wayward Telescopes (AHWT) was a Celestron FirstScope. It was bequeathed to me by a co-worker moving to the mainland and thus dwelt for a time in my office, there being little room in my garage for yet another telescope.
