All of the snow on Mauna Kea is gone again, the last forlorn patches disappearing in the last weeks of May. The glistening white has surrendered to the rich browns and reds of the cinder.
It was a bit of a bet among the crew as to whether the last patches would last until June 1st. Considering much of the snow in question fell just before Christmas, this was quite the run. Alas, the last bits were gone just before the 1st.
While we may get a light dusting or two over the summer anything heavier is unlikely. We had a fairly snowy winter over the 2016-2017 season. I wonder what next winter will bring?
A modest snowfall in February, 2017 covers the southern plateau of Mauna Kea
Take a series of photos from the Juno spacecraft and just project them in sequence to make a timelapse movie of the spacecraft swinging past Jupiter. Sounds easy… Right?
Not easy at all. As the spacecraft orbited past the planet the perspective changes rapidly. To make a natural seeming animation much more would have to be done. Mathematician Gerald Eichstaedt did just that… Taking 36 images he projected each image on a mathematically modeled sphere, then panned through each image using the orbital trajectory of the spacecraft to create a view to simulate actually being there.
The result is simply stunning, take look at what it would have been like to be there as Juno swung past the planet just a few thousand miles above the cloudtops.
As you drive to the top of the cloud layer you hit a point where the fog and the sunlight mingle. This is often between 7,000 to 9,000 feet, a mile or three below Hale Pōhaku. Passing through this zone is often a beautiful event in the day, rainbows, fogbows and misty shadows fill the mountain air…
A fogbow formed from drifting fog blowing across the Mauna Kea access road. Click on the image to peruse the panorama properly.
Today Venus is at maximum elongation, as high in the dawn sky as it will get for this morning apparition, about 45.9°. After today the planet will begin its slide back into the glare of dawn. It will disappear from view around the end of the year and reach superior conjunction on January 8th, 2018.
As Earth and Venus race about the Sun, Venus will complete about one cycle of appearances each year. We can expect one evening apparition and one morning apparition to occur in 2017.
Moonset would not be until nearly 11pm, otherwise the weather looked quite promising for a night on the mauna. The plan… A late arrival and setup at the substation site across the street from the Mauna Kea VIS
Arriving late would mean most of the evening crowd at the visitor station would be gone, taking their headlights with them, hopefully leaving a dark and quiet night to enjoy. This early summer season places the center of the Milky Way high overhead for much of the night for excellent observing possibilities.
Deep Violet set up under Mauna Kea skies waiting for moonset and full darknessSometimes things work out exactly as planned.
Meeting me on the mountain would be David Kriege, owner of Obsession Telescopes. This trip marked his first opportunity for Hawaiian observing and to take advantage of that he brought along a 22″ ultra-compact model. Along with David came Mike, he brought a camera in place of a telescope, not a bad choice with the Milky Way high overhead all night.
A spectacular image taken by the Juno spacecraft just above the cloud tops of Jupiter. Waves of clouds at 37.8 degrees latitude dominate this three-dimensional Jovian cloudscape, courtesy of NASA’s Juno spacecraft. JunoCam obtained this enhanced-color picture on May 19, 2017, at 5:50 UTC from an altitude of 5,500 miles (8,900 kilometers). Image credit: NASA/SWRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstadt/Sean Doran
Early science results from NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter portray the largest planet in our solar system as a complex, gigantic, turbulent world, with Earth-sized polar cyclones, plunging storm systems that travel deep into the heart of the gas giant, and a mammoth, lumpy magnetic field that may indicate it was generated closer to the planet’s surface than previously thought.
This image shows Jupiter’s south pole, as seen by NASA’s Juno spacecraft from an altitude of 32,000 miles (52,000 kilometers). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Betsy Asher Hall/Gervasio Robles“We are excited to share these early discoveries, which help us better understand what makes Jupiter so fascinating,” said Diane Brown, Juno program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “It was a long trip to get to Jupiter, but these first results already demonstrate it was well worth the journey.”
Juno launched on Aug. 5, 2011, entering Jupiter’s orbit on July 4, 2016. The findings from the first data-collection pass, which flew within about 2,600 miles (4,200 kilometers) of Jupiter’s swirling cloud tops on Aug. 27, are being published this week in two papers in the journal Science, as well as 44 papers in Geophysical Research Letters.
