A Darker View

Mercury and Venus

Over the next week Mercury and Venus will rendezvous in the sunset. This evening will see the two separated by 48′, well under one degree. This will close to about 38′ on the evening of January 10th, just a little over the width of a full Moon apart. Both objects are fairly bright, with Venus shining at -3.9 magnitude and Mercury at -0.7. Bright enough to be quite obvious, the pair will be 17° above the horizon at sunset.

Mauna Kea White

A Failed Attempt at the Summit

The instruments were warming up. Liquid nitrogen exhausted, cooling interrupted by loss of power, the cryogenic dewars had begun to warm. Recovering instruments takes many days of vacuum pumps and re-cooling to restore function if cooling has been loss. Other problems caused by the storm and power outages plagued the summit, some systems not responding to remote queries.

Keck Under Ice — Keck Observatory covered in heavy ice

On Friday, the crew had abandoned early in the day in the face of deteriorating weather conditions. With the storm raging, no one had made it to the summit on Saturday. We all watched as remote weather instruments reported sustained winds of over 100mph and gusts as high as 134mph. With the wind came freezing fog, a thick coating of ice forming on every surface. The snowplow crews did not even try Saturday, it was just too dangerous.

Sunday offered at least a hope of making it to the summit. The storm had abated and beautiful sunny skies appeared over the summit. We readied for an attempt at the summit of Mauna Kea. As the engineer on call I would join the support techs at the summit. Maybe we could salvage something from the chaos.

Continue reading “A Failed Attempt at the Summit”

Keck Under Ice

Not just a little ice. A world where everything is coated with multiple inches of ice. The freezing fog left behind impressive results.

Mauna Kea Snow Under Moonlight

Full Moon

Full Moon will occur today at 18:53HST.

Continue reading “Full Moon”

Earth at Perihelion

Today the Earth is closest to the Sun, a point called perihelion. We will be about 147,099,000km (91,403,000miles) from the Sun. Compare this to the 152,096,000km (94,508,000miles) we will be at aphelion on July 6th, a difference of about 4,996,000km (3,104,000miles) occurs throughout one orbit.

It may seem odd that we are actually at the closest for the middle of northern winter, you just have to remember that proximity to the Sun is not the cause of the seasons. The seasons are caused by the axial tilt of the Earth, creating short and long days throughout the year, with a resulting change in the angle and intensity of the sunlight.

2015 Solstices and Equinoxes
	UT		HST
Perihelion	Jan 4	08:59UT	Jan 3	22:59HST
Vernal Equinox	Mar 20	22:45UT	Mar 20	12:45HST
Summer Solstice	Jun 21	16:38UT	Jun 21	06:38HST
Apehelion	Jul 6	12:59UT	Jul 6	02:59HST
Autumnal Equinox	Sep 23	08:20UT	Sep 22	22:20HST
Winter Solstice	Dec 22	04:48UT	Dec 21	18:48HST

Source: NASA Sky Calendar

Quadrantid Meteor Shower

The first meteor shower of 2015 is the annual Quadrantid meteor shower. The Quadrantids are a reliable shower, producing 60-120 ZHR, one to two meteors per minute. The Quadrantids are named for the obsolete constellation Quadrans Muralis, now part of the constellation Boötes.

Leonids in Orion — A pair of Leonid meteors streak through Orion

Unlike other showers where activity can occur for days or even weeks, the Quadrantids have a sharp peak, activity falls off rapidly on the preceding and following nights, or even a few hours away from the peak. Thus it is important to observe the Quadrantids quite near the peak prediction. For 2015 the peak is predicted for January 4th around 02:00UT, or January 3rd at 16:00HST on this side of the globe, mid-afternoon. The shower radiant in Boötes does not rise until around 2am local time. Combine the light of a full moon and poor timing and you quickly see that observing conditions are less than ideal for observing this year’s shower.

Watching meteors requires no more equipment than your eyes and a dark sky, and can be enjoyable for just about anyone. Set the alarm early? Probably not this year.

A Little Nasty Weather

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.

The 2014 DarkerView Review

In reading my friend Dean Ketelsen’s blog he reminded me that I have not yet assembled my usual year in review blog entry. Darker View is a blog, a web log of my life as blogs were originally invented.

As it is customary to use the new year’s holiday as a reason look back on the previous year I shall do just that. A chance to recall what adventures life has brought us, to remember the little victories, and hopefully not too many failures.

There were 434 blog entries for 2014 detailing a busy year. At least a few folks actually come by to read all of those posts, DarkerView had 69,694 view from 31,607 unique visitors. Looking through the top read posts of 2013 reveals some interesting points…

It is a surprise just how many of these articles were written before 2014, at least two of these articles are from the old Whitethorn House website, well over a decade old! The telescope making posts make up most of these older, well read articles. It is clear that folks are using DarkerView for reference, finding these old articles in the search engines. Hopefully they are still useful.

Removing the pre-2014 posts from the list dramatically shortens it…

I am not sure that this is good. Is my writing falling off? Or does my older work just have staying power that it continues to serve a use for readers. This will be interesting to watch as I start another year of blogging. DarkerView is here to stay.