A Darker View

There are days when it seems like the entire island population comes to Mauna Kea. This is certainly the case on a snow day, the first day the road is open after a fresh snowfall will see a crowd of folks ascending to the summit to play in the snow.

Loading Snow — Loading pickup trucks with snow for export from the mauna.

This winter the snow came for Christmas, several feet of snow just before the holiday. MKSS was able to plow through the snowdrifts and open the road for the public on Christmas Eve. The result was predictable, hundreds drove up to the snow to enjoy a white Christmas.

One local tradition is the hauling of snow from the summit to the beach. On some days dozens of pickup trucks can be found on the summit, or filled with snow making their way down the mountain road. The snow will be the basis of parties and games on the beach or in green tropical lawns. Online you can find photos of snowmen under palm trees or snowball fights and smiling keiki on Hilo yards.

Continue reading “To Play in the Snow”

Full Moon

Full Moon will occur today at 14:33HST.

With this full Moon a penumbral lunar eclipse will also occur, visible across Europe and Africa, and partially visible from North America. None of this eclipse will be visible from the mid-Pacific including Hawaiʻi. For the islands the next good lunar eclipse will occur Jan 31, 2018.

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TMT Opponent’s Alternative Facts

A number of other commentators are noting the use of alternative facts by telescope opponents. While I have commented a few times here on DV about the issue, it is heartening to note that I am not alone in this.

Ahu — An ancient ahu (shrine) at 11,000ft on Mauna Kea

Environment Hawaii has published a number of articles that cover the ongoing TMT contested case. The latest is quite critical of Sierra Club Director Marti Townsend’s recent testimony. The article is quite forthright in noting a list of factual errors in her testimony.

Many of the witnesses have testified on cultural and religious issues, no problems here, these are personal matters where there is no objective truth. But over and over we have seen witnesses make very specific physical and scientific claims that are simply wrong. It will be interesting to see how these inaccuracies are addressed in the findings of the hearing officer.

No, Mrs. Townsend, there are no glaciers on Mauna Kea. There used to be, about ten thousand years ago, but they are gone now.

ATM Gallery

Gluing the Mirror Box — Gluing the mirror box for Deep Violet, and 18″ f/4.5

Mirror Cell — The 18 point mirror cell, built to the plans from Barry & Kriege

The Strap — The primary mirror support strap

Ground Board — The ground board with center pivot and teflon pads in place

Drilling a Pocket — Drilling a pocket to accommodate a carpet pad in the side of the rocker box

Nearly Ready — Deep Violet fully assembled and nearly ready for dark

Deep Violet at Sentinel, Arizona for the 2015 Pierre Schwarr Star Gaze

Axis — Detail of the tripod head, latitude adjustment and the RA and declination axis

Set Up — Primero setup at Jarnac Observatory among a friendly crowd of other telescopes

Binocular Parts — Stripping and cleaning the 14×100 binoculars

Celestron Cometron in Parts — A completely disassembled Celestron Cometron telescope

Upper Truss Clamp — Detail of the upper truss tube with the lever type latch

Threadsert — Detail of the brass threadserts used to hold the lower truss clamp

12.5" Dobsonian — A 12.5″ dobsonian telescope after the refit

Machining the Mirror Cell — Machining the mirror cell from a piece of scuba tank

Empty Mirror Cell — The mirror cell prior to installing the primary mirror with the focus knob at the back of the strut

Mirror Mount — A very standard design for the mirror mount

Front View — A front view of Makaʻiki ready to observe

Strut Extended — Makaʻiki with the main strut extended for use

First Light for Makaʻiki — Makaʻiki under the stars for the first time at Hale Pōhaku on the side of Mauna Kea

Pier Forms — The forms for the pier upright filled and leveled

Pouring the Upright — Bill Lofquist pouring concrete into the upright part of the pier

Complete Pier — The completed pier with a telescope atop

Orange Tube Corrosion — Looking at what remains of the paint on an old Celestron C8 orange tube telescope

Stripping the Orange — The orange paint just crumbles away under a few sweeps of a power sander

Ready for Paint — Parts of the mount prepped and taped for painting

Drying Paint — Paint drying on the front and rear castings of the old orange tube

Restored C8 — A restored Celestron C8 on a similarly restored TeleVue Renaissance mount.

Transit Telescope — The C8 set up along the old Saddle Road for Mercury Transit

Secondary Cage — Re-assembling the secondary cage on the 20″ Obsession. The truss tube clamps still need to be cleaned up and re-installed, same with the focuser.

Rusted Hardware — The rusted hardware removed from a 20″ Obsession telescope

Fixing the Clamp — Opening up the truss tube clamps by widening the slot with a hacksaw.

Secondary Mount Fix — A fix for the secondary mount

Clamps — Clamping the rocker box of a 20″ Obsession

Primary Mirror from the Back — Installing the primary mirror. This is a Galaxy Optics 20″ f/4. Oddly enough Sky Hudek, the son of John Hudek, the owner of Galaxy is a good friend and dive buddy.

Trunk Handles on the Rocker Box — Trunk handles added to the rocker box to make picking it up and loading it in a vehicle easier. They are mounted just high enough to avoid the wheelbarrow handles when installed.

My copy of The Dobsonian Telescope by David Kriege and Richard Berry

20" f/4 Obsession — 20″ f/4 Obsession #004 fully assembled for the first time in over a year. Ready for alignment and use!

Hammered

Various types of hammers await use in the Keck machine shop

Taming a Rotary Encoder

The rotary encoder is a popular input device for many microcontroller devices. A knob that can be used to increase or decrease a setting with a nice tactile click for each increment. You can even get an integral pushbutton, just rotate for the setting then press the same knob to enter. With some clever programming you can create a one device user interface using only the encoder.

GenPIC Development Setup — The development setup in use generating the first software release for the GenPIC utility PCB

I have integrated a rotary encoder in the GenPIC utility board. With the combination of an LCD display and the rotary encoder you have all the ingredients for a functional user interface arranged neatly for a panel mount unit.

In the past I have simply set an interrupt to fire on the edge of one channel, then sampled the opposite channel to detect the direction. With the addition of a small delay to debounce the result. This worked well in previous devices, but this time I encountered trouble, the direction sampling was erratic, the value going up when it should have gone down and vice-versa.

Breaking out my logic analyser I found out why, this particular encoder proved to be somewhat noisier than I had seen in the past, with notable periods of bouncing signals.

Continue reading “Taming a Rotary Encoder”

Ladder

2017 Cherry Blossom Festival Star Party

Cherry Blossom Festival is a huge event where a large segment of the island population descends upon Waimea for a day of celebration. there are booths and events all across town. There are cultural demonstrations, cooking demonstrations, performances, and lots of food available for an all day, all town festival.

Solar Viewing — Viewing the Sun at the Cherry Blossom Festival

With most of the parking on the south side of Keck observatory, the shopping mall parking lots, and the main event venue north of Keck at Church Row where the cherry trees are, a huge number of people cross the observatory lawns on their way to the festival. It is a natural fit for us to use the day for an outreach event.

The festival is also a very local event. Sure there are a few tourists drawn to Waimea for a festival. But, by and large this is a local event, the majority of attendees are island residents.

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61G Ocean Entry

A heavy plume of gases trail from the 61G lava flow ocean entry