As if hurricanes, earthquakes, flash floods and tsunami are not enough, the USGS just raised the alert level for Mauna Loa to advisory/yellow.
Here we go… Yet Again
It is not a hurricane watch, but rather a tsunami watch that is currently in effect for the island. This afternoon’s 8.3 magnitude earthquake in Chile may have generated a tsunami that may arrive around 3am tomorrow morning. The early data from stations along the Chilean coast report a tsunami has indeed occurred of between ½m and 3m in height. Oh the fun of living in paradise…
Update: Tsunami watch downgraded to an advisory, minor effects expected.
To Build a Clock
As I teenager I taught myself digital electronics. Working from the classic books of the day, mostly the TTL Cookbook, I built a succession of projects. Among these was my first clock. Unlike other projects, this clock was a kit from Jameco Electronics. It actually had a printed circuit board, a wooden case, and a red acrylic face. Not only did I get to solder a real circuit board for the first time, I learned every gate and flip-flop in the circuit. When I finished I knew how it worked.
On Monday this week a teenage high school student was arrested and interrogated by police for bringing a digital clock of his own construction to school. Like any young budding engineer Ahmed Mohamed wanted to show off his creation. Unfortunately the closed minds of MacArthur High School in Irvine Texas only saw a Muslim student with a possible bomb. It is clear someone has been watching way too much Fox News.
The most poignant part to me is Ahmed being led out of the school in handcuffs wearing a NASA t-shirt. In those photos I saw myself, a nerd in High School, doing the same things, starting on a road that would eventually lead me to an engineering job on the world’s most powerful telescopes.
Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great. – Tweet by President Barack Obama
It is gratifying to see that the message of many of these comments is that a young person building an electronic project is something to be celebrated, not feared. We should be encouraging students to experiment, to build, to learn. True engineers start this way, exploring technology for themselves, the experience gained can not be taught in a classroom. In my career I have met and worked closely with dozens of engineers, I can tell which ones were tinkerers and makers before they started college, who build and create for the sheer joy of it.
Ahmed is not sure if he will return to school immediately and the family is consulting with attorneys. Police are currently holding the clock as evidence. Thirty years later I still have my first clock.
Just a Little Smoke
With aluminum shavings flying about I was enjoying an after work session in the machine shop.
Then the fire alarm goes off.
A moment of disbelief ensues, this had never happened before, and this was certainly not the first time I had created a little smoke in the machine shop. Nothing to do but call our facilities manager and let him know that I had just set off the fire alarm, not that he could mistake the loud ringing in the background of the phone call.
I also realized that earlier that day the fire alarm company had been about, replacing old sensors on the alarm system. This had to be related. With my phone call complete I joined everyone else outside. Admitting responsibility led to a round of good natured joking at my expense… Yeah, I will hear about this for a while.
Fire alarm reset everyone went back to work. I hope my disruption of the night crew preparing to observe was not significant. It was still quite light out and observations had not yet begun. I returned to finish the part, this time carefully not creating any smoke in the process.
The next day I found out what really happened. It had been decided to replace the heat detectors in the machine shop with smoke detectors. To my mind not a great decision, they will get set off. It is not a question of if, but when and how often. I just find it amusing that this occurred the first day. No worries, I expect it will get fixed. The same person who made that decision gets the phone call when the alarm goes off. Sufficient motivation to deal with the problem I expect.
First Light for Makaʻiki
First light is complete… It works very nicely, the images of rich star fields and sweeping nebulae are worth the hours of work it takes to complete the fabrication of a telescope.
As usual the most difficult part of assembly is the last. Installing and aligning the optics. Adjustment of the secondary mirror for the correct position takes an hour of mucking about with allen keys, a Cheshire eyepiece, and a laser collimator. Get it centered, get the tilt right, correct placement of the secondary is critical for good performance of the telescope.
The final step is first light, the traditional ceremony when a new telescope is aimed at the sky for the first time. My traditional first light target is M42, the Great Orion Nebula. An old friend and telescope maker, Bob Goff, often stated he would like to tour this nebula in spirit after he died. I do not know if he made it, but I remember him each time I commission a new telescope and peer at the beauty of this nebula.
Given the time of year I had to get up before dawn for a view of this nebula. Driving uphill from the village I could see Orion rising above the dark shadow of Mauna Kea. In the predawn darkness I set up near Hale Pohaku for my first light checks. Set up is a bit grandiose for this telescope, there is not much to it. Open the tripod, set the scope on top, take the covers off and aim at the sky.
The first object to focus in the telescope was M42, the nebula appearing quite nice at low power. The 40mm eyepiece gives a 3.3° field at about 19x, wide enough to comfortably fit the entire nebula region in the field, from NGC1980 to NGC1981. From there I wandered about the sky… M1, M78, M79, M41, M35 made for a nice sampling of objects.
Higher powers shows that collimation can be a bit touchy in the ‘scope, not a surprise given the single strut design.
There were also three bright planets in the dawn. The brilliant Venus is shining near its maximum brightness right now, showing a nice crescent in the telescope. Mars is still too far away to show much of anything and Jupiter was still quite low in the brightening dawn, the moons barely visible.
First Light complete I knew that the effort to create a new telescope was worth it. Makaʻiki performs as designed. With a sense of satisfaction I headed uphill for breakfast and to join the crew for a day on the summit.
Green
Processing the photo I realized I could not make it green enough. If I pushed the saturation far enough to resemble reality I would be accused of over-processing the image. Yes, the ranch lands around Waimea and Waikoloa are that green right now.
The normal annual rainfall in Waikoloa is about 12 inches. Over the last few weeks we have received eight inches in our unofficial rain gauge on the front lanai. Normally summer is the dry season here, with most of the rainfall occurring during the winter months. The result is endless green across the mountainside.
As the rains have continued this last weekend, another half inch in the rain gauge, it will stay green. Eventually the rains will come to an and, everything drying out, returning the pastures golden brown again. Then, of course, the mice will come.
New Moon
Prodigious ‘Brightest Cluster Galaxy’ Discovered Churning Trillions of Stars
An international team of astronomers has discovered a distant massive galaxy cluster with a core bursting with new stars. The discovery, made with the help of the Maunakea-based W. M. Keck Observatory and Canada-France Hawaii Telescope, is the first to show that gigantic galaxies at the centers of massive clusters can grow significantly by feeding off gas stolen from other galaxies. The study has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.
What is so unusual about SpARCS1049+56 is that it is forming stars at a prodigious rate, more than 800 solar masses per year – 800 times faster than in our own Milky Way.
This surprising new discovery was the result of collaborative synergy from ground-based observations from Keck Observatory and CFHT as well as space-based observations from NASA’s Hubble, Spitzer and Herschel Space Telescopes.
The Keck Observatory data was gathered by the powerful MOSFIRE infrared spectrograph and was crucial to determining SpARCS1049+56’s distance from Earth as 9.8 billion light-years, that it contains at least 27 galaxies and that it has a total mass equal to about 400 trillion Suns.
The cluster was first identified from the University of California, Riverside-led, Spitzer Adaptation of the Red-sequence Cluster Survey, or SpARCS, which has discovered about 200 new distant galaxy clusters using deep ground-based optical observations combined with Spitzer Space Telescope infrared observations.
Because Spitzer and Herschel Space Telescopes detect infrared light – enabling observers to see hidden, dusty regions of star formation – they were able to reveal the full extent of the massive amount of star formation going on in SpARCS1049+56. However, the resolution of the infrared observations was insufficient to pinpoint where all this star formation was coming from. Therefore, high-resolution follow-up optical observations were performed by the Hubble Space Telescope to reveal “beads on a string” at the center of SpARCS1049+56 which occur when, similar to a necklace, clumps of new star formation appear strung out like beads on filaments of hydrogen gas.
“Beads on a string” is a telltale sign of something known as a wet merger, which occurs when at least one galaxy in a collision between galaxies is gas rich, and this gas is converted quickly into new stars. The large amount of star formation and the “beads on a string” feature in the core of SpARCS1049+56 are likely the result of the Brightest Cluster Galaxy in the process of gobbling up a gas-rich spiral galaxy.
Continue reading “Prodigious ‘Brightest Cluster Galaxy’ Discovered Churning Trillions of Stars”
Flumin’ Kohala Slideshow
Floating down a century old irrigation canal is an excuse for a lot of photos. More than fit in the article that posted yesterday. I put a bunch more photos in a quick slideshow…
Flumin’ Kohala
With the water conditions remaining poor for diving, it was time to consider some other activity for the Labor Day weekend. Recalling a news release from a few months ago I had an idea… Flumin’ Kohala.
Flumin’ Kohala offers two tours a day, an 8am tour and another at 12:30pm. I knew that the earlier tour was far more likely to offer clear blue skies and rain free conditions. In the afternoon the clouds often build along this coast, creating the rain that the irrigation canal is designed to collect.
This tourist attraction has been closed several times when the canal was damaged. The 2006 earthquake destroyed one flume and damaged others forcing the kayak tour to close. This was eventually repaired allowing tours to begin again. In early 2015 the canal was again badly damaged, this time by heavy rains and flooding, forcing tours to cease. After repairs the tour was restarted, this time by the ditch operator instead of contracted out. Thus the new company is locally owned and employs local residents. All of our guides were guys that grew up in North Kohala, full of information about the area.
The water was used to irrigate thousands of acres of sugarcane and to supply the five sugar mills that once operated along the Kohala Coast. While sugar production ceased in the 1970’s the canal system continues to supply water to local ranchers and a nursery.
Today it is the employees of Flumin’ Kohala that maintain the canal system as well as providing tours. Repairing the old stonework, clearing debris and sediment from the ditch and pruning back the rain forest that would quickly overgrow the canal. Water level is maintained through a system of sluice gates that must be adjusted with the rainfall to let water out of the ditch where needed.
Midway we stopped an got out to enjoy the view from one of the flumes crossing a pretty gulch and waterfall. Of course there is no trail here, getting out meant we were standing in a couple feet of flowing water wading across a bridge. Usually one wades under bridges, not over them. Everything about this tour was definitely unique!
The laborers who carved and maintained the canal system left marks of their passing. In a few places Japanese Kanji characters can be found along the tunnel walls, preserved underground. Thousands of hand carved blocks of stone line the tunnels and banks of the canal, a testament to the craftsmanship of those who built.
As the website strongly warned us… You will get wet! We wore swimsuits under our shirt and shorts, good choice. I wore a set of hiking sandals, Deb a pair of scuba booties. For cameras I used the GoPro while Deb shot a G11 in the waterproof housing. My sturdy canvas hat was a good choice as well, protecting my scalp from the tunnel ceilings a few times. Wet we got! As recommended we brought towels and the Flumin’ Kohala office has large bathrooms set up for changing into dry clothing when you finish the tour.
I was expecting a fun day, Flumin’ Kohala was more fun than I expected. This was no short trip, the miles of canal and tunnels just kept flowing past. This is an adventure well worth the cost. Great guides and a fascinating experience provided just the thing for an otherwise quiet Sunday.