When you want to see the stars, find someplace dark
Ok? That was fun. A fairly serious quake right underneath us. A preliminary mag 4.5 centered between town and the summit of Mauna Kea. The building was shaking pretty good, with a series of hard and sharp shocks. I felt at least three aftershocks, though the USGS website shows five additional events in quick succession at much the same location and depth.
We had a few minutes to enjoy a beautiful sunny day in Waimea, as all of the Keck staff waited outside for the shaking to stop.
Watching sunrise from the summit of Mauna Kea is often the highlight of many visitor’s trip to the island. Any given morning will see a handful of tour vans and rental Jeeps atop the summit ridge awaiting the first glint of sunlight. A small crowd of camera wielding tourists mill about, gazing at the spectacle or huddle in vehicles to avoid the bitter wind.
I do occasionally stop to watch myself. While the telescope operators head for breakfast down below. I stop and join the crowd for a few minutes. Sometimes you just have to take a moment and enjoy the privilege of working in a place like Mauna Kea.
Click on the image for a better appreciation of what it is like to be there… Without the wind.
With my face behind the camera, and looking the other direction, I did not notice the commotion I had caused. A swirl of colorful motion caught the corner of my eye. I turned to see a horde of butterflyfish attacking a seemingly uninteresting rock face. I watched for a moment before a memory triggered… Of course!
It is likely the gang of butterflyfish used my presence as an opening to overwhelm the Sergent. Local lore is full of examples of this behavior. The passage of a larger predatory fish, or a diver, will give the guarding male Sergeant a pause. A slim opening upon which the gang will swarm the eggs and feed. During Sergent breeding season it is not unusual for divers to mention schools of butterflyfish or tangs following them in and around the nesting areas.
I literally have to push my way through the swirling fish to examine the nest. The rock is covered with eggs, an amazing number of little purple dots covering an area of about a meter square. Despite the ongoing feeding frenzy, the nest seems intact, with nearly every bit of the rock covered with the neat little lines of eggs.
Hoover1 makes an interesting observation… “One can only wonder why Sergent eggs are so conspicuous while most damselfish eggs are hardly visible”
1) Hawaiian Reef Fishes, John P. Hoover, Mutual Publishing, 2008
A world shrouded in hydrocarbon smog, where there are rivers and lakes collecting methane rain. Despite numerous flybys of the Cassini spacecraft and landing of Huygens probe on the surface, Titan remains a very mysterious world. A thick atmosphere and exotic chemistries create conditions that might even harbor some form of life.
Taken from this angle, the view looks toward the side of Titan that always faces away from Saturn. Keep in mind that Titan is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles across), much smaller than the Earth, but quite a bit larger than our Moon. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Aug. 9, 2011 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 938 nanometers. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.4 million kilometers (870,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 35 degrees. Image scale is 8 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel.
Saddle Road is still Saddle.
Despite millions of dollars spent repaving, or outright rebuilding this road, some of the old Saddle still exists. While the road is vastly better than is has ever been, no amount of rebuilding can completely eliminate the hazards of dense fog, wild animals, and the other conditions that make this road unique.
This particular curve seems to claim at least one car each year. I have seen three other wrecks here, including at least two other vehicles upside down within feet of where this Toyota rests. And those are only the ones I have seen, not counting the number of times the fence has been crushed amongst a litter of vehicle parts. At least this time the injuries were mostly inflicted on the vehicle, the police officer I spoke with indicated that the passengers were quite lucky.
I have a fair collection of wreck photos taken along the commute up and down the mountain. A reminder to take the roads of Mauna Kea seriously.
Driving Saddle Road provides endlessly beautiful vistas. Every day the clouds and light are different. I never seem to tire of this road. Even when retuning home tired, the scenery is worth watching…
One drawback to the many iPhone astronomy apps is the lack of large databases. To an advanced amateur such as myself, the lack of detailed databases is a distinct negative in these programs. I venture way beyond the Messier catalog, or even the NGC on a regular basis. I understand the price to be paid in speed and memory required to support larger databases, but I would like to have the option.
There is one decent answer for comets… I found a very nice app for comet ephemerides published by Keith Yohn. Called simply Comet, this free program downloads the latest ephemeris data from the Minor Planet Center and displays the current and future coordinates for each comet. Just what I needed!
There are no charts, the data is simply displayed in table form. Every observable comet is displayed and can be search for using a simple set of filters.
When attempting to observe comet C/2009 P1 Gerradd a few times recently. I have found the coordinates to be quite accurate. The comet was in the sky, right where the app showed it would be. Nothing like a real world test.