I have to admit I was worried that the decision could go against the TMT project.
It did not.
Retired Judge Riki May Amano presides over the TMT contested case hearingEarlier today hearing officer Judge Ricky May Amano recommended that the TMT project be granted a Conservation District Use Permit or CDUP.
The decision is nearly three hundred pages long, none of us has had a chance to do more than skim some of the more interesting sections. Indeed most of us opened the document and skipped straight to page 260 to read the Recommended Decision and Order first.
An overhead view of the proposed Thirty Meter Telescope, credit TMT Observatory CorporationWhat I have read appears to be a straightforward reading of the law involving land use. Yes, it is a conservation district, that means that there shall be sufficient management of the project, but does not mean that the project cannot proceed.
We have yet to see the outrage from TMT project opponents. I expect it will be shortly forthcoming and quite vehement.
Where do we go from here? As I understand it the next step is for the DLNR board to vote on the acceptance of the hearing officer’s recommendation and reissue the permit. Of course the next thing to happen after that is the inevitable court challenge. This will go straight to the state supreme court as recent legislation set that as the path for land use cases, skipping the lower courts.
Having an array of cameras on the summit of Mauna kea that capture images all night long has advantages. While the cameras are intended to allow the telescope operators to monitor the weather, they do catch other atmospheric phenomena.
In this case is it a powerful blue jet, a form of upper atmospheric lightning. While these sort of events had been reported for decades, mostly by aircraft pilots, they were only acknowledged by meteorologists after they were first photographed in 1989.
My friend Steve Cullen first noticed the jet in an image from one of the Gemini North CloudCams. It jets upwards from a strong thunderstorm cell passing north of the island, part of the remains of Hurricane Fernanda.
Unfortunately our Keck CloudCam is pointed just a little too west to have captured this event. The next night our camera captures several red sprites, but they are rather distant.
The various cameras capture sprites and jets with a fair regularity anytime there are strong thunderstorms around the islands. If a hurricane is anywhere in the vicinity it pays to check the archives. This jet is bar far the most impressive yet.
Enjoy the image…
A blue jet from a thunderstorm passing north of the island. Original image is a CloudCam image courtesy Gemini Observatory/AURA
Update: On Facebook we were having a discussion about how tall the jet was. I calculated the image scale of the camera, a Canon XTi with a 20mm lens, arriving at about 59 arcseconds per pixel. I also measured the jet as 840 pixels high (there is some extension of the upper part in a hard stretch of the image). Thus the jet is 13.74 degrees high, now all you need is distance to the cell.
Tom Polakis found a good satellite image from the night in question showing the storm about 210 miles away from the summit of Mauna Kea. This and a little trigonometry shows the jet rose about 51 miles above the top of the storm clouds!
Leaving Deb to take a nap in the hotel room I grabbed a camera. The shopping was done, nothing to do until we loaded up baggage and groceries for a quick flight to Craig the next morning. I wondered if the Ketchikan waterfront would offer a few photos, so I grabbed the 6D with the 70-200mm f/2.8, a rain jacket, and not much else for an evening walk.
A conversation with Jack, a longtime Ketchikan resident“You know you are trespassing.”
The comment caught me by surprise. I was threading my way along an apparently abandoned section of docks noting a possible photo opportunity involving some harbor seals.
Turning, I was met by a fellow stepping out of an old white van that looked to have been parked in place for the entire summer.
The Horsethief petroglyphs are something special to me, wrapped in childhood memories. This is also where I proposed to Deborah, in front of the magnificent Tsagaglalal, She Who Watches. Traveling to eastern Oregon to visit family we had made a point to stop by and see this place again.
Tsagaglalal or She-Who-Watches at Horsethief LakeIn my youth visiting was easy, the petroglyphs were were almost forgotten and sat quietly along the river, visited by those few who knew they were there.
The Horsethief recreational area was a lightly used picnic area and campground, one of many along the river. If you knew where the little trail was you could simply park by the rail tracks and walk out to the images. Among my earliest memories I remember swimming in the lake and visiting these petroglyphs.
Tomorrow morning, July 20th, a pretty crescent Moon will be located close to a brilliant Venus. The Moon will be a slim 11% crescent a little over 4° from Venus shining at -4.0 magnitude. The pair will rise about three hours before sunrise a bit before 2am, look for the two above the brightening glow of dawn.
The Moon, Venus and Aldebaran join up for an evening conjunction
