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!

An art blast from the past

It's not often one receives a present from one's younger self for Christmas, but so it was this year: my mom found a nativity set I'd made out of clay (each piece dutifully inscribed “DB 2000”, when I was eleven) and wrapped it for me. Here's a photo:

It's always interesting to see what one's younger art looks like (especially when you've forgotten about in it the intervening decades). I notice with amusement a few things that feel very familiar, such as minute details and texture in some places and nothing in other (for instance, all the beards have detail scratched into them in what is otherwise a fairly stylized production). There's also a rigid adherence to a small set of colors without any mixing, but utilizing them in imaginative ways; I count just six colors of clay (purple, brown, tan, yellow, orange, light blue), and it doesn't look like I mixed any to produce different shades. Both of these are things I still struggle with to an extent in painting: it's easy to get lost in details while neglecting larger parts of a composition, and I still tend to use a relatively small number of colors in any single painting session (though I at least do mix them, now).

On the positive side, I'm pretty impressed with how this came out. Even at eleven I was coming up with interesting little details like the different crowns on the magi or the decorations on their gifts. (I'm pretty sure from close inspection that the first one was supposed to be holding a gold bar, to go along with the frankincense and myrrh of the others.) Anyway, that's a little something to close the year out with. Hard to believe 2024 is finally over! A hui hou!

You should hear it in the original Greek!

Singing Angels We Have Heard On High in church this morning reminded me of something I thought of some years back when I was first learning Greek: namely, that you can replace the Latin refrain Gloria in excelsis Deo in the carol with the original Greek, Δόξα ἐν ὑψίστοις θεῷ (Doxa en hupsistois theo). It's not quite a perfect fit since δόξα has two syllables to gloria's three, but it's generally less awkward to stretch a syllable slightly than to squash another one in. 

I've mentioned this curiosity to a few people over the years, but today it occurred to me that with LilyPond I could engrave some sheet music to demonstrate it. I brushed off my LilyPond skills (which I found surprisingly fresh for not having been used in a few years) and spent a few hours today making this lovely rendition:

Thankfully, I found a version of Christ, the Lord, is Risen Today I'd done a few years ago laying around which gave me a very useful hymn template, including useful features like multiple verses and a refrain; otherwise having to figure out how to do that would've taken me a lot more than a few hours. There are a few small cosmetic tweaks I could still do (the lyrics attach to the soprano voice so there are few choices which simplify the lyrics handling at the expense of nice-looking notes), but it should be performable. I hope. Let me know if you do.

Anyway, Merry Christmas! I know it's been pretty quiet around here, but there are positive developments which I hope to share in the not-too-distant future. A hui hou!

Edit: Actually, I forgot to mention the most interesting thing I learned while doing this, which is that the the way I grew up singing Angels We Have Heard On High is different from how the music reads. I'm short on time at the moment and it really needs some music to show visually rather than trying to explain it in words, so I'll return to this in the future when I have time.

Edit 2: Okay, here's a picture showing the music as traditionally written (top) and how I grew up hearing it. I'm just focusing on the melody here for simplicity:

This four-bar phrase gets repeated for the second half of each verse, so we can look at it by itself. The thing that immediately drew my attention is that in the traditional formulation the entire phrase begins and ends on the same note (A), whereas the way I grew up with it has the final three notes descend to the F below. To me, the traditional way sounded quite jarring at first (to the point I thought I'd made a mistake in transcribing the music) because it feels like there's no resolution: you begin on A, sing around it a bit, then end…back on A, where you started. The version I'm familiar with does that in the first half of the phrase (setting up a mild unresolved tension), but then resolves it in the second half at the end.

Of course, in music, there's no right or wrong, just different matters of taste. Having listened to a rendition of the traditional melody a few times I find it growing on me. The song is one whose origins have been lost in the mist of time, so we can't exactly ask the author(s?) what they were thinking. Perhaps the verses are intentionally set up this way to increase the emotional payoff from the spectacular resolution in the refrain, which is the kind of beautiful polyphonic waterfall of sound you no longer find in modern church music. Anyway, let me know in the comments which version you heard growing up, I'm curious if what I learned is widespread or some local phenomenon. I can't really trace it to a single source, it's just…how I know the song.

Sizing koa saplings

Yesterday I went back up to the State Tree Nursery in Waimea to volunteer again (after my first time there three weeks earlier). I had thought we'd be doing the same thing, but discovered we were doing something a little different this time. Instead of transplanting seedlings from their germination beds into individual growing containers, we had trays of already-transplanted saplings several months old, and were dividing them by size (and spacing them out a little more) to help the smaller ones grow better without getting shading out by the taller ones.

(When does a seedling become a sapling, anyway? I guess that's a bit like asking when a baby becomes a child…)

(Oh, and happy Thanksgiving!)

This photo shows the process: on the right, a tray of saplings of various sizes, which I sorted into the four trays on the table. (I started with three size categories, but found four worked slightly better after some experience, which is why they go second-smallest/largest/second-largest/smallest from left to right.) We also gave them a bit of fertilizer, and removed any weeds that had sprouted. It was a rather meditative (and surprisingly satisfying) experience, as I quickly became proficient at sizing saplings and there was a hydroponic setup with some gently recirculating water that made it a very low-stress, soothing time. Perhaps as a result I didn't bother counting closely, but we probably handled some two thousand or so saplings over the course of the morning, finishing about 1:30 in the afternoon.

One other interesting thing I got to see was koa seeds (above). Koa is in the Fabaceae or pea family, and forms little leguminous seed pods which contain the seeds, which are about the size of a soybean, though a lot flatter.

Anyway, that's all the volunteering for the Mauna Kea Forest Restoration Project I have for now; the volunteering opportunities they have aren't spread evenly throughout the year, but tend to bunch up somewhat. I asked about the saplings I helped sort yesterday, and was told they'll probably be planted next spring in a few months, so who knows, I might get a chance to help put them in the ground come that time. We'll see! A hui hou!

Transplanting koa seedlings

Last week I had the opportunity to volunteer at the State Tree Nursery over in Waimea. We were helping transplant koa seedling from their germination beds into individual containers, to grow up a bit more before being used for reforestation efforts on Maunakea next year. If you remember when I volunteered to go planting back in the spring, this is where those saplings we were planting came from. It was interesting to see that, a bit like reading a prequel story. 

Here's a photo of what we were working with – hundreds of seedlings, germinated together in a bed on a table.

Each went into its own individual container, to grow until they're about waist height and ready for outplanting.

And here's how many we had left at the end of the day! I know I personally filled six racks of fifty containers each (plus helped fill a few more), so between volunteers and staff that were there that day we probably transplanted over two thousand seedlings, easily. Not all of them will survive when planted in the wild, but that's still quite a few trees that will go out next year! And this was just one day of four – I'll be heading back on the 27th for another day of transplanting.

In fact, as I took Old Saddle Road to Waimea in the morning, I drove by where I'd helped plant saplings earlier this year and caught glimpses of some of them in passing. I don't know how long koa take to grow – I imagine it's on the order of decades – so it'll probably be a while until they're majestic trees, but it was inspiring to see them growing there. Hopefully I'll have more opportunities to help with planting in the future. A hui hou!

Catching Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS

Tuesday evening I drove up Maunakea to the Visitor Information Station to see if I could spot Comet C/2023 A3, a.k.a. Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS. I hadn't felt particularly motivated to get up before dawn to see it earlier, but now that it's in the evening sky I figured I'd see if I could spot it.

For an astronomer, I'm a little embarrassed at how few comets I've actually seen. While solar eclipses (which I actually have never seen) either land in very out-of-the-way places or come at inconvenient times when I'm scrambling not to spend money on travel, I haven't lacked for chances over the past few decades to see comets (though a few, like Comet NEOWISE in 2020, did come at times when I wasn't really able to get somewhere dark enough to see them). Still, I don't have much excuse for missing Comet McNaught in 2007 or Comet Lovejoy in 2011. I did see Comet Holmes' remarkable brightening in 2007, though that was an unusual comet since we were seeing it almost head-on, so it didn't really display much of a tail. There are probably a few more I missed in that time span as well which I've forgotten; on the whole, I have a pretty poor track record of seeing naked-eye comets even when presented with the opportunity.

Which is why I found myself yesterday trudging up the path to the top of Puʻu Kalepeamoa in some extremely strong (and frigid) winds, setting up my GoPro for a timelapse, and waiting for the sunset. The timelapse didn't quite work out as planned since it failed to adjust the exposure time properly after it got dark, but I managed to get some photos, at least. 

The setting Sun through a māmane tree. They're in bloom this time of year.

The nearly-full Moon, unfortunately, wasn't doing the comet any favors as it lit up the night sky. I was first able to make it out maybe a half hour after sunset, then as twilight faded it became easily visible for perhaps another hour or so; by the time I left, nearly two hours after sunset, it was getting low enough on the horizon to be difficult to make out again.

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS over Hualālai, with Venus at left.

With that, I can finally say that I've seen a proper, honest-to-goodness hairy star, and I have the pictures to prove it. Speaking of, I got those shots with my Pixel 7 Pro; not as good as a professional camera, but it's still remarkable to me just how good the software and hardware in phones has gotten, that it can capture shots like this in low light. (I did set it up on a tripod for stability, but still.)

Overall it was an interesting experience, and I'm glad I made the effort to see it. (Though after sitting out in those winds, maybe I should've gotten up to see it before dawn from Hilo, where it'd be warm[er] and humid instead of frigid and parched…) It should still be visible for a little while, perhaps the next few weeks; the Moon will start rising later and it'll be getting higher above the horizon, which will both make it easier to see, but it's also receding from the Sun which will make it get fainter, so there's a tension between the various effects. The next few days should still be good, though, and I'd recommend making the effort if you haven't seen it. I probably won't head up Maunakea again, but I'll try to keep an eye out for it from Hilo as it rises high enough now to be seen above the western horizon. A hui hou!