Tsunami (2025 edition)

Well, it's been a while since I last used the tsunami label on a post! Looking back I used it six times between 2010 and 2014, then…not until now. The first three years I lived in Hawaii each had a tsunami alert (two important enough to use the sirens), which primed to me think of them as roughly annual events. But then I haven't experienced one since 2014 (I don't think there were any while I was away in Australia), so when we started hearing tsunami watches (and then warnings) on the radio on Tuesday the 29th while working up at the Natural Area Reserve it was something of a blast from the past.

Thankfully, much like the others I've experienced living here, this one proved relatively uneventful. I've seen a reported wave height in Hilo of 4.9 feet, which was enough to flood some parking lots (and probably the first floors of some buildings) along the coast, but not enough to cause major damage. The wave was initially estimated to arrive just after 7 PM; it was still just light enough (right after sunset) that I put my drone in the air for about twenty minutes to see if I could see anything in the bay. The actual arrival happened around 8:30 PM, though, when it was far too dark to be see anything. (I also saw another drone in the air while I was up there, so I wasn't the only one with that idea.)

This was the largest tsunami alert since 2011, large enough that the sirens were activated – and since Friday was the first of the month, they also got activated for the usual first-of-the-month test, so I got to hear them twice in four days. Since I'm (decently far) out of the evacuation zone where I live it ended up being a relatively normal evening for me, but it's a good reminder that life's never boring when you live on a volcano in the middle of the Pacific! A hui hou!

Zoo, part two

I mentioned back in May how I went to the Panaʻewa Rainforest Zoo just south of Hilo for the first time on my birthday, and how that happened to be a rainy day. While I did enjoy my visit and the lack of crowds caused by the rain, I wanted to go back at some point when it wasn't raining to get more photos of the animals. I finally went about a month later, in June, which is about a month ago from when I'm writing this post as it's been pretty busy for me in the intervening weeks.

I found myself drawn back to several of the same animals, as the change in weather had some clear effects on their behavior or look. The red iguana above already looked good in the rain, but positively glows in the sunlight with an iridescent sheen. (And also appears to be enjoying itself from this angle.)

Similarly, I once again ended photographing the bumblebee poison dart frogs, which were much more active this time. Whereas before they were pretty much motionless, this time I saw several climbing or jumping around the enclosure. I think they were being fed, as this little group kept bobbing their heads forward and darting their tongues towards the mesh.

I did end up with a few photos that weren't just repeats, such as this one of the alligator in its enclosure.

I also got a nice shot of this golden crowned crane, native to Africa and the national bird of Uganda. I had to get in position with my phone then make a little noise to get it to look at me, but it worked out!

Overall it was a fun time. It was interesting to see how the animals' behaviors changed (or didn't) with the weather, and the lighting let me appreciate various colors better. There were a lot more people there with the sunny weather, but not enough to feel too crowded.

This is a little unfortunately timed, in that the zoo will begin charging a small admission fee in August, so this weekend is one of the last times to visit for free. I can see the reasoning behind it, and there's a relatively cheap annual pass so it shouldn't be too hard for people to continue going, but it's still a bummer. We'll see how it goes, I suppose, perhaps the revenue will allow for expansion and renovation (there are a few places noticeably empty at the moment which could have animals in them). A hui hou!

Hilo Bonsai Exhibition, 2025 edition

This past weekend I spent a night observing on Keck, and the weekend prior my parents were in Hilo, so it's been something of a busy month for me with less downtime than usual. I've got a few post ideas backing up as a result which I hope to get out before too long, and for today's post I want to get back to something that happened last month (on Tau Day, even!), a visit to the annual bonsai exhibition at the Wailoa Art Center.

There was a lot of impressive topiary on display, and while walking around to see and photograph it one thing I saw there stuck with me: a little placard that said something like, “Bonsai is not about making a big tree small, but about making a small tree look big.” It inspired me to look in a different way while taking pictures; instead of simply snapping a shot from my vantage point (usually looking down on a piece), I tried taking a few shots as if from the ground looking up at a normal-sized tree.

This one benefited from the light pouring in on it from above, which lit it up in a striking manner. I went about an hour before it closed in the late afternoon, since I was finally feeling better that day after being sick with COVID-19 the entire week (for the third confirmed [and probably sixth overall] time). The way the leaves are illuminated from above reminds me of working in the forest, especially since this month we started a data-collection protocol involving measuring the crowns and canopies of trees (with a lot of associated looking upwards, usually right into the Sun overhead).

And while this one isn't that little – it's probably a good two feet high – a low angle helps it look even larger. Cut out the background and you could fit this tree in a landscape with little difficulty (other than the fact that I cropped the edges out; whoops).

Anyway, I've got some more post ideas and projects in the works that I just haven't had the time or mental energy to get out yet, but with this weekend hopefully going back to normal I might be able to make some progress on that front. We'll see! A hui hou!

Happy Two Pi(e) Day 2025!

It's that time of year again folks! By which I mean Tau Day, 6/28, and Michael Hartl's annual State of the Tau update. Looking back over my blog, I realize this marks ten years since I made my first post on Tau Day back in 2015 (with one every year since except for 2017, where I seem to have simply forgot).

Since you're probably tired of me explaining over and over again why \(\tau=2\pi\) is a more natural circle constant than \(\pi\), let me instead share some (photos of) actual pies. You see, up in the Puʻu Makaʻala Natural Area Reserve where I work a lot of plants are busy producing various fruits over the summer. Two of those happen to be the native Hawaiian raspberries (Rubus hawaiensis), known as ʻākala, and the native Hawaiian blueberries (Vaccinium reticulatum & V. calicynum), known as ʻōhelo (though they're actually red in color).

ʻŌhelo and ʻākala are both edible, though neither are particularly sweet (and ʻākala in particular can be very tart). Last month someone at work suggested the idea of baking them into a pie (where some added sugar could combat the tartness), and this inspired me enough to go out, buy a pie pan, and make some practice pies. I used a recipe for blueberry & raspberry pie (which I'm pretty sure I made while I was in Australia), using store-bought berries to stand in for the Hawaiian versions.

Before baking…

…and after!

And I think it came it pretty well! This is the second of two practice pies I made, since the berries I bought turned out to be just enough for two. The top cover design is meant to be a stylized view of a D20 die (or icosahedron), since we're the 20th domain in NEON and often abbreviated D20 (and have shirts with such a design on them). This was my first time making my own dough (I just used pre-made pie crusts in Australia), and while I think it could be slightly tweaked and improved I'm pretty happy with how it came out (both visually and taste-wise!).

I haven't had much time to collect berries from the field the past two weeks, but this week should provide me opportunity. Yesterday a friend of mine sent me a picture of an ʻākala pie from another conservation team on the island, so I'm clearly not the only person experimenting with it. A hui hou!

He hōkū hou: catching nova V462 Lupi

I didn't quite get this post out on the solstice, but I do have some astronomy-related news! On June 19th I saw a Sky & Telescope article about a newly-discovered nova in the constellation Lupus, V462 Lupi. As a quick reminder, a nova happens when a white dwarf accretes enough hydrogen from the atmosphere of a companion star that it ignites in a thermonuclear explosion, causing the white dwarf to brighten by millions of times (though usually leaving it intact). “Nova” is simply Latin for “new” as the resulting brightening looks like a new star among the fixed denizens of the night sky (and “he hōkū hou” in the title is simply Hawaiian for “a new star”).

After V462 Lupi was discovered on June 12th at a magnitude of 8.7, by the 19th it had brightened up to a naked-eye visibility of around 5.5. I've managed to catch Uranus by eye at around that magnitude from the Visitor Information Station before, so on a whim I decided to head up on the evening of the 20th to see if I could catch this nova. (The AAVSO light curve showed that it seemed to be plateauing, so I figured it might start to fade soon and I wanted to catch it before it did.)

The weather wasn't fully cooperating, as there was a faint high-level cloud layer to the south where Lupus lay along the Milky Way. Visibility was pretty good, all things considered, but everything was just slightly blurry from all the water vapor in the air. I could make out the broad strokes of the dusty rifts in the Milky Way, but none of the fine filamentary structure. Thankfully there was no Moon (something I forgot to check beforehand), which let me see the zodiacal light in the west as the Sun sank below the horizon from my perch atop Puʻu Kalepeamoa.

While I wasn't able to see the nova, thanks to modern technology I was able to capture it in a five-minute exposure with my Google Pixel phone. (I continue to be impressed at the astrophotography capability of this phone, as you may remember from my excursion to catch comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS last year.) It's not the most beautiful picture of the night sky I've seen, but considering the quality of the seeing it had to work with it's remarkable it came out as well as it did.

Ta-da!

Oh, you can't see the nova? Yeah, me neither. There are far too many stars visible – I'm not sure what the limiting magnitude is, but I've found stars as faint as magnitude 9.5, so there are a lot more stars here than you could see with the naked eye. Let me notate the constellations visible in this photo…

All right, that's better! (I've taken a few liberties in drawing the asterisms.) At least we know where we're looking now. I had to aim by trial-and-error so I didn't manage to center Lupus in the shot on this try, but the nova is in view. It's near where the arm of Centaurus approaches Lupus, around that triangle formed by Delta Lupi, Beta Lupi, and Kappa Centauri, so let's zoom in…

…way in. Just north of the triangle I mentioned is another little triangle of stars (I've marked both in orange in this image to distinguish them). And just north of that triangle's eastern (left) tip is our nova! That eastern star in the little triangle is magnitude 5.8, and it looks like V462 Lupi was about as bright at the time. That would probably have been visible had the sky been clear, but them's the breaks in astronomy; we can't fight the weather, merely live with it. My retinas probably collected a few photons from it over the time I spent staring in that direction, and I'm primarily happy that I got a photo I can share.

And if we go back to the wide-field annotated photo, I caught a few bonus deep-sky goodies in Centaurus! Omega Centauri shines brightly where I've circled it, and inspection reveals the fuzzy, non-stellar nature of this massive globular cluster. Even more impressive, however, is that a five-minute exposure with my cell phone camera shows a hint of the active, unusual galaxy Centaurus A, at a respectable 11–13 million light-years away! (I've imaged both of these objects before, if you want to see what they look like up close: Omega Centauri, Centaurus A.)

Anyway, that's my little near-solstice adventure this year. It's always fun to be reminded of changes in the heavens, especially when they're (theoretically) visible to the naked eye! A hui hou!

A rainy birthday zoo visit

Just south of Hilo lies the Panaʻewa Rainforest Zoo & Gardens. It's the only zoo in the United States located in a rainforest, it's free to enter, and in over a dozen years of living in Hilo I…have never visited. Recently there have been discussions about needing to start requiring an entrance fee, and now that I pass by it several times a week for my new job I decided to fix that oversight and visit for my birthday.

Despite the fact that it was pouring down rain today. Actually, even in spite of the rain I still had a fun time. I went with my friend Josh who had visited multiple times before but hadn't been in over a decade, and he was able to point out some of the changes and improvements. I managed to take some surprisingly good photos despite the rain, so have a few of them:

A bumblebee poison dart frog in its enclosure.

It's not a very large zoo – it took us perhaps a bit under two hours to see everything – but I found that rather nice; I've visited much larger zoos that took all day to see everything, and it does get a little exhausting after a while. This was a refreshingly ‘bite-sized’ zoo.

A red iguana chilling in the rain. Despite appearances, it was awake and watching me.

And it's not like it lacked for interesting animals, either. I'm only showing the better photos I managed to get, but it's got a neat selection of reptiles and amphibians, including several species of poison dart frogs and various chelonians. There are four native Hawaiian birds, the pueo (owl), ʻio (hawk), ʻalalā (crow) and nēnē (goose), multiple primates and a number of brightly-colored tropical birds, some peafowl who roam the park, tigers, emus, and even some binturongs and an alligator. 

A pueo, the native Hawaiian owl.

All in all it was a fun excursion, and with how close and easy to visit it is I'm a bit embarrassed I never visited sooner. I'm actually quite impressed with how well some of the photos I got with my Pixel 9 Pro came out despite the rain (and me juggling an umbrella in one hand), and I'm interested in coming back on a clearer day to spend some more time and see what else I can get.

A couple of emus in the rain. I knew better than to get my phone (and fingers) up close to them…

And altogether that made for a fun and memorable 36th birthday. My birthday hasn't been on a weekend since 2020, and since I'm usually saving vacation time for trips it was nice to have a relaxing day off to myself this year. (Especially after spending a rather chillier and less pleasant rainy day in the field earlier this week.) A hui hou!

A new job with NEON

It's been four weeks since I started my new job with NEON, the National Ecological Observatory Network (managed by Battelle), long enough for me to start settling in and having a chance to catch my breath. There's been a lot to learn. The past few weeks have been a blur of trainings on various data-collection protocols, learning to identifying dozens of plant species, and a procession of trips to various pre-established plots in the rainforest for data collection. (Plus a little bit of lab work.)

Being up at altitude near dawn for mosquito collection is rough, but the dewy grass is incredible.

NEON's mission is to provide a decades-long collection of ecological data from a network of locations across the US, so the various protocols are designed to get that data in a standardized format from diverse locations. There are twenty ‘domains’ across the US (of which we are Domain 20), which may have multiple sites where data is collected (though there's only one site in Hawaii). This data is open-source and available for anyone to use, a fact which fits my personal leanings very nicely. (Having an ORCiD already set up from my time in astronomy proved useful as we use them for attaching credit to data collection, so I may be able see data I've collected used and attributed in future papers.)

Some Astelia menziesiana (an endemic lilly) on a log.

Collecting such data isn't necessarily easy, though! In addition to the simple fact of the collections sites being located around 5,000–6,000 ft (~1,500–1,800 m) up the side of Mauna Loa, the nature of many protocols involves strict time sampling restrictions, which might require spending the day working in rain. (We're supposed to evacuate in thunderstorms, but those are rare near Hilo.) Even without rain spending 6+ hours in the field is no joke; some plots may have a lot of hard lava rock underfoot, while others (especially with feral pigs present) may be slippery mudholes. I've been amazed by the number of fallen logs in some of the older sections of the forest, which combined with the undergrowth can make getting around something of a challenge. We work four 10-hour days, and while the three-day weekend is nice there's no denying that working that long can be grueling, especially on field days.

Me recording data in a light drizzle.

Still, it's not without its upsides. While it can be uncomfortably hot, cold, or wet at times, at others it can be fairly pleasant. The work itself is interesting; while I had some experience identifying plants before, I'm learning all kinds of new, native plant species, and finding them for the plant diversity protocol is rather like a treasure hunt. Depending on the plot, we might find trees some 500 years old, or be exploring relatively younger lava flows from Mauna Loa perhaps a mere 250 years old. There's little human presence in the Natural Area Reserve where we work (although it's technically open for hiking), and the still-intact native forests house native birds which are rare elsewhere.

We often see nēnē at the site; I think I saw more my first day than in all my time here previously.

I've also found the labwork, though a far cry from anything I've done before, to be interesting. So far I've sorted leaf-litter from our leaf-litter traps, seeing how the distribution of species varies from plot to plot, and identified beetles from our beetle traps. The particular beetles we're interested in are called carabids, and while most species on the mainland are ground beetles, our native Hawaiian species are arboreal (though we still manage to catch them in our ground traps, somehow). There have actually been two entirely new species found in our traps in years past, which is certainly an exciting prospect.

Leaf litter sorting, into various piles for things like leaves, flower, seeds, twigs, etc.

After four weeks I'm not sure if this is something I want to continue doing indefinitely, but I've got a wonderful group of motivated, clever, and fun coworkers to work with and there are certainly fascinating aspects to the project and sights I wouldn't see otherwise. Perhaps I'll feel differently after a few more months. We'll see! A hui hou!

A Handel Easter hymn

Happy Easter, dear readers! A few weeks ago I accidentally introduced a hymn we sang in church today, Thine Is the Glory (or Thine Be the Glory, I've seen both titles). To explain, the music for the hymn comes from George Frederic Handel's oratorio Joshua, from a chorus titled “See, the conqu'ring hero comes!”. We've been going through the book of Joshua in Sunday School, and I'd been taking turns teaching while our regular teacher was away for a few weeks. I listened to Joshua (the oratorio) due to being reminded of it, remembered the hymn derived from it, and, since it's a resurrection song and Easter was a month away, introduced it to the class. Which reminded our music leader about it, causing him to pick it for Easter (despite it not being in our usual rotation). I felt like this was as good an excuse as any to digitally engrave some music, and whipped up the score below this afternoon for fun:

In the process I learned the difference between the Early Modern English verb forms ‘hast’ (second-person singular present indicative) and ‘hath’ (third-person singular present indicative) while checking lyrics, since some versions (incorrectly) used the latter instead of the former in the phrase “Thou o’er death hast won.”

There's an interesting history behind this tune, which you may see categorized in hymnals as “Judas Maccabeus”. You see, in 1746 Handel composed an oratorio titled Judas Maccabeus, which became one of his more popular oratorios. The next year in 1747 he composed Joshua, along with this tune. Joshua falls into what I would describe as “solidly average” for Handel; it's not bad by any means, and has its share of high points (I'm particularly fond of “A solemn March during the circumvection[sic] of the Ark of the Covenant”), but mostly didn't achieve the same popularity.

Except for this chorus, which is sometimes rated as Handel's second-most-famous chorus after the “Hallelujah” chorus from Messiah. Noting its popularity, Handel went back and added it into Judas Maccabeus (perhaps in 1751, it's generic enough in wording that it fits), and the combination took off. Then in 1884 the music was used by Swiss hymn writer Edmond Louis Budry as the basis for a new hymn, “À toi la gloire,” or Thine Is the Glory when translated into English.

And that's the story of how a tune composed for one oratorio got named after a different oratorio and ended up in a hymn. (It helps that it's a relatively simple chorus sung in unison without any polyphony, making it pretty easy to sing.) History is truly fascinating sometimes. A hui hou!

Relaxing waves in Hilo bay

I'm starting my new job tomorrow, so I may be a bit preoccupied with that for a while as I settle into a new routine. I know some generalities about what I'll be doing, but the particulars remain to be discovered. (Though I'm expecting to be rather sore and tired for the next week or so.) I'll probably get some posts out of it in the future, at least!

Earlier this week, though, I took the opportunity of some high-surf days to get some drone footage of waves crashing over the breakwater in the bay and turned it into this video:

The observant may remember I did a similar video last year. While that one was taken in overcast, almost stormy conditions, the high surf days this week were on gorgeous, mostly-clear days, which made for a nice contrast. Where I went with some fast-paced music with that video, this one got some calmer music, slower editing, and some nice relaxing wave sounds. Anyway, hope you enjoy it! A hui hou!

Ancient Indonesian architecture

All right, one last post from my Indonesia visit: while I was there, we visited a couple of historical stone structures, two candis and a stupa. All of them were several centuries old, dating from around the 13th to the 15th centuries. The first one was Candi Singhasari, a syncretic Hindu-Buddhist structure thought to be the funerary temple of King Kertanagara (d. 1292), the final king of the Singhasari dynasty. It's an interesting construction, and it's impressive that it's still standing after centuries of earthquakes with such a relatively tall and narrow design (though it looks like some of the top portion has been dislodged).

Candi Singhasari

There isn't really an interior, just some small chambers.

About 6 km north of it is Sumberawan, a Buddhist stupa thought to have been constructed near the end of the 14th century or early 15th. It's rather unique, as it's the only Buddhist monument in East Java to have been constructed in the stupa style found elsewhere in Asia (with the rounded top) rather than the local candi style. It's located in a lush garden near a spring which was probably used for various rituals, and ties into its name: sumber means “(water) spring” and awan means “noon” in Javanese.

Sumberawan

Finally, we visited Candi Jago, a Hindu temple from the 13th century. It was apparently described as “majestic” in the Nagarakretagama, a 14th century document in Old Javanese whose translation in the 20th century helped inspire the Indonesian independence movement. It's hard to make out in the photos, but it's ringed in multiple layers of fine bas-relief, which are still there all this time later.

Candi Jago

When I visited I assumed these structures were composed of basalt, but while looking them up for this post I've learned it's actually andesite. Still a volcanic rock, though it's a little lighter gray rather than the darker black of basalt. It holds up quite well given the heat, humidity, and tropical rainfall of the area, though. Anyway, I thought these were interesting enough to share (especially Candi Singhasari, I like it's design). A hui hou!

Visiting Museum Angkut

Another thing we did while I was visiting my parents in Indonesia (and probably the last worth a post) was to visit Museum Angkut. I was told beforehand that it was essentially a sort of car museum, with various models on display (and some other vehicles). Which isn't necessarily a bad definition, but as we discovered that's a bit like calling the Hawaiian archipelago “a little isolated.”

To begin with: yes, it has a lot of old or rare vehicles. It has cars from Model Ts up to these 70s models that look like they've been stretched out, up through I think a few from the late 80s. Though as the photo shows, it also had a number of other vehicles, including a few helicopters, various military vehicles, the Indonesian equivalent of Air Force One, wooden scale models of various Asian ship designs, and some older vehicles like carts and rickshaws.

Oh, and lots of different bikes, of both the human-powered and motorcycle varieties. Including this bizarre two-person bicycle which I couldn't get over. Those wheels are around my height, they're huge!

And if that was all the museum had, I would've thought it an hour well-spent and considered it a good museum; everything was laid out nicely, with informative placards, and it was genuinely interesting seeing how car designs had changed over the century since their introduction. But then, trying to find the exit, we discovered that we'd only seen maybe 20% of what there was to see…

Outside the building we'd been in up to that point, we found alternating indoor and outdoor areas, done up to look like various places and times to show off even more antique vehicles. The street in the photo below was meant to look like Hollywood in the first half of the 20th century, and yes, everything you see there is within the museum ground.

The locations on display were both quite varied, and often impressively done. There was an “old Batavia” street from the late 1800s, the aforementioned Hollywood street, a Europe zone (indoors) with locations from Italy, France, and Germany in the 20th century, an outdoor Buckingham Palace, a Las Vegas area, and another Hollywood area where they had a number of cars from various movies such Ghostbusters.

The Buckingham Palace area.

Complete with mysterious royal flying unicorn!

This took perhaps another two hours or so to get through, and was all quite fascinating. And then we discovered that there was yet another part of the museum, called the Floating Market! I'm not sure if it was actually floating, but it was a collection of various food-and-souvenir shops set up around and on some islands in a water feature (interspersed with yet more exhibits, such as a dedicated section on Indonesian military vehicles). I forgot to get any photos of this part because I was starting to get a little overwhelmed after seeing so much (plus the intermittent rain wasn't making our time spent outside much fun, and most of this part was). We finally found the way back to the parking lot, only to run into even more parts of the museum along the way, such as one of those theaters where you strap into a moving seat that gives you a feeling of motion as you watch a video.

I came away very impressed, and also rather exhausted from the sheer number of different cars and set locations I'd experienced. (Not to mention people, I've mostly managed to avoid them in the photos above but the museum was quite decently busy.) I've been to a few vehicle museums before like the train museum in Sacramento or (most recently) the Air and Space museum in Tucson, and Museum Angkut felt really well-done. I'd have been impressed simply with the range of vehicles and models in the first building, but the areas after that really sold it as being an attraction worth visiting if you're ever in Batu (on the island of Java).

Were I to visit again I'd like to go on clear day, as the nature of the museum going from indoors to outdoors and back again several times meant that I couldn't enjoy the outdoors portions as much when it was raining, though we visited during the rainy season so that's on us. I also wasn't prepared for the sheer amount of things to see, so it got a bit overwhelming when I kept coming upon new things long after I was mentally prepared to be done – I'd love to see it again with a better idea of how much there was to see, as it was all very interesting. Anyway, I can definitely recommend it! A hui hou!

Visiting Indonesian watefalls

While I was visiting my parents in Java we went to see some nearby waterfalls, and since we didn't get rained out this time I was able to get my drone in the air for some video. I actually didn't think to take too many photos as a result, but I got a few from my vantage point on the ground.

Coban Palangi.

The first one we visited was Coban Palangi; “coban” means waterfall, and “palangi” means waterfall (with the ‘c’ being pronounced like a ‘ch’). This was the tallest and most visually impressive one, as it plunged over the rim above and generated a lot of mist in the valley below. It was overcast when we visited, so we didn't get to see a rainbow. (And why the photo looks somewhat washed out.)

Here's a shot of Coban Palangi from above. It was the most open of the three waterfalls, allowing me more freedom to maneuver and get different angles. That openness also required the most hiking, down from the road above into the valley where it was.

Coban Toris.

The next day we visited two more waterfalls near each other, Coban Toris and Coban Tarzan. These were both smaller waterfalls tucked away under canopies of foliage, which made them feel a bit cozier and meant I had to get creative with the limited range of drone shots I could get.

Coban Tarzan.

But if you'd rather see these watery wonders in motion, check out the video below from the footage I was able to take:

One interesting thing I did notice while hiking (and flying my drone) in the Javan rainforest is that there seemed to be very few flowers visible from above the treetops. Not that every tree here in Hawaii has flowers, but we do have a lot of the invasive African tulip tree which always seem to have a lot of bright orange flowers visible from above. I haven't tried to quantify the difference, but it was something I noticed while looking out across the jungle canopy while hiking into and out of the valleys where the waterfalls were.

Not much more to say about this, other than that I'm glad the weather cooperated after getting rained out at the tea plantation tour. I like waterfalls, as I'm sure is pretty clear from this blog, so it was neat getting to see some in other contexts and locations. A hui hou!

Visiting a tea plantation

I spent the last week of January in Indonesia (specifically the isle of Java) visiting my parents, who are there for (at least) two years for work. I unfortunately came down with some nasty food poisoning near the end of the trip which laid me out for a few days, then was busy with Journey through the Universe after getting back (for the first time since all the way back in 2014 and 2015, though this year was just being part of a career panel rather than a classroom presentation since I didn't know when I signed up last year if I'd still be on-island in February). Thankfully things have finally settled down enough for me to write a few posts.

The first day I was in Indonesia, we visited Wonosari Tea Plantation on the slopes of the Arjuna volcano. It's nearly a thousand meters above sea level, which keeps the climate cool enough for the tea plants to survive; lower down the tropical climate would be too hot for them.

Photo taken during a downpour that rolled in while we were there.

Seeing the fields of tea plants was rather interesting. One thing that struck me about them was that they had other trees planted at regular intervals in them, as seen in the photo below. I don't recall all the reasons our guide mentioned as to why, but I remember they at least use wood from the trees as fuel, and they might have other uses too (like shade for the tea harvesters, or attracting pollinators or biological pest control, perhaps).

You can see the tea plants in the photo above, growing as roughly waist-height bushes. Something I learned from our guide is that tea plants, if left alone, are really tea trees, growing to some 20 feet high or more. (They left a few to grow naturally as a demonstration.) So in a sense, all the plants here are tea bonsai, which I found rather amusing.

Perhaps the reason they're so small is because they're constantly having the buds and new leaves nipped off for tea. The fountain statue above shows the all-important part of the plant which is harvested: the bud and no more than two leaves down. Those sprigs of tea go into a sorting and drying process which happens on site and which we got a tour of, but weren't allowed to take pictures of. It was an interesting process; the plantation is quite large, and while I don't remember the exact amounts I think they were shipping out hundreds of pounds (possibly tons) of tea every single day (since the tea can grow year-round, and they can just work their way around the fields giving each section time to regrow).

Anyway, it was a neat tour, and afterwards I was going to send my drone up and get some photos only for a tropical downpour to roll in (as seen in the top photo, which I actually took as we were leaving). I'm a little bummed about missing out on that since I think I would have gotten some amazing views, but I did get to use my drone later on so that's something to look forward to. I'm not sure how many posts I'll get out of this trip, but there should be another one or two coming at least. A hui hou!

Trying (and failing) to catch Kīlauea fountaining

My friend Graham and I have, twice this month, attempted to catch the current eruption of Kīlauea only for the fountaining happening in its caldera to take a break the night before we visited. (It's currently in a stage of fountaining and resting in haphazard alternating bursts.) Our first trip, fog came in at dusk so thickly that we couldn't even see any glow from the caldera, but at least we were able to see something on our second outing.

We also did some hiking, including the hike along Sulphur Banks. I hadn't done that one before and found it quite a nice walk. It's in this sort of valley near the caldera with trees on the sides but little vegetation other than grass in the middle due to the heat underground, giving it this sort of idyllic quality (as seen below).

It also has places where elemental sulfur (from hydrogen sulfide reacting with water) form crystalline deposits, which is pretty neat.

While hiking Devastation Trail, I also found this vantage point where you can see Maunakea from. It's a cool perspective, with Kīlauea in the foreground, Mauna Loa in the middle, and the peak of Maunakea in the distance. From left to right, I'm pretty sure the observatories that can be seen upon it are Subaru, Gemini, and CFHT (though you might have to enlarge the picture).

And finally, with night falling, we were able to make out the glow of fresh lava on the floor of Hale Maʻumaʻu. I'd read there were some new lava flows, but it was fascinating to see it up close (especially since I was only expecting to see a bit of localized glow from the cracks in the lava lake, which is on the far side of the crater).

Overall it was fun to visit the volcano again and try to catch the ongoing eruption, even if Kīlauea wasn't playing ball. I hiked a few trails I wasn't familiar with and found some new favorites (the Sulphur Banks trails was especially nifty), and it's always cool to be reminded of the sheer scale of (one of) our local hole(s) in the crust. I don't know if I'll try to catch the fountaining again given how unpredictable this eruption is being, but we'll see! A hui hou!

New year, new job

I began last year with a post explaining how I'd learned in December that my job at Gemini wasn't going to end up being extended beyond October, and that I didn't know where I'd be in a year. This year I find myself in a somewhat curious mirror to that situation, though in this case the good news is that I've accepted a job offer and it doesn't require moving.

Back in November I applied for a job with a company called Battelle, working with a program called the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), a set of observation sites scattered across the U.S. with the goal of providing a standardized, long-term, open-access database of ecological observations. In December I was contacted for an interview, and then got a job offer the next day. I dithered a bit, since it's a seasonal position running from April through November (when I'd rather have a more stable position), but since I hadn't heard back from any of the other astronomy jobs I'd applied to and it would allow me to stick around in Hilo for another year I ended up accepting.

It's rather different from anything I've previously done, so I'm not entirely sure what to expect, but from what I've learned it involves conducting observations generally having to do with biodiversity or population sampling (with roughly a 75/25 split of field work to lab work). The site here in Hawaii is located on the slopes of Mauna Loa (some 3,000–4,000 feet up, I was told), but with the access road close to Hilo, and I think the company's base facility is actually just across the road from the Gemini offices where I was working.

The irony that this is now the second time in the last decade that I've 

1. had a desk job in astronomy for about three years,
2. been let go because of funding issues,
3. taken a job on the slopes of Mauna Loa,
4. which lasted/will last for less than a year,

has not been lost on me. (Though I do hope it's not setting a pattern for the future!) Still, the job sounds interesting, and I think I'll enjoy it while I have it.

With the recent wildfires in Los Angeles county, I've also realized that I may have dodged a bullet; I had an interview with IPAC, the astronomy center at UCLA, back in August, and while nothing ultimately came of it there's an alternative timeline where I might have moved to L.A. around this time and been affected. (I've heard that several IPAC developers have lost houses to the fires, so…) I'd rather not move, but if I had gotten a job offer I'd probably have taken it, so it's probably for the best that that didn't go anywhere.

Anyway, as mentioned, the job doesn't start until April so I've got some months of downtime until then. I'm sure I'll have more to say about it once it starts, and maybe some more post ideas in the meantime. A hui hou!