Opening the Shelter for the Yuan-Tseh Lee Array, a Belated Birthday Video!

So it turns out my birthday came and went on the 17th this year without me ever mentioning it here. Turns out, like several years ago with the JCMT, I was observing at a telescope! The YTLA this time, though. Altitude often makes me forgetful however, and I completely forgot to mention it at the time.

However, the day after my birthday a co-worker of mine by the name of Johnson Han who was out from ASIAA in Taiwan working in Hilo for a few weeks brought his high-end 4K-video-camera-equipped drone up to the site hoping to get some aerial footage of the telescope enclosure being opened, as we were planning to do some daytime observing in the late afternoon. Unfortunately, the weather was cloudy and misty until well after sunset, and we weren't able to even open the shelter until almost 9 o’ clock. This didn't deter him, however and he got some great shots of the Mauna Loa Observatory area during the day and then some footage of the telescope opening at night.

I was enthusing over the video he got and mentioned I was into video editing, and Johnson graciously offered to send me the footage to play with. After several days  two weeks working to edit it down to a comfortable length without having to cut too much, I've got a neat video of the area where I work and some of the things I do which you can see below (in a whopping 4K [2160p] resolution if you have a screen big enough, which I don't)!

As mentioned in the video, Johnson exhausted his last back-up battery getting that footage so he wasn't able to capture the telescope rearing to its full height and moving around while observing, so I still have a goal to shoot for myself. In the meantime, enjoy this belated birthday video, and if you have any questions feel free to ask down in the comments!

Johnson also has his own YouTube channel where he's been slowly uploading his own movies of various parts of the Big Island of Hawaii, like flying his drone out to where the lava was entering the sea, or up the Wailuku river, or even getting some nice aerial shots of ʻImiloa and the various astronomical buildings in Hilo, and I'd encourage you to check them out. Also a big 'thanks' is in order to him for letting me use his amazing footage in the first place. A hui hou!

U.S. Passports, and a Hawaiian Hero

I've been slowly working through the application process to the University of Swinburne, which necessitated renewing my passport as my old one expired two years ago. My new one came a two weeks ago, and the design has changed quite a bit; it now incorporates quotes from people or events in American history both famous (George Washington, the Declaration of Independence) and not-so-famous (“Except from the Thanksgiving Address, Mohawk version”). I was somewhat surprised to find a quote by Hawaiian astronaut Ellison Onizuka among them:

Every generation has the obligation to free men's minds for a look at new worlds…to look out from a higher plateau than the last generation.    —Ellison S. Onizuka

For those who don't know, Ellison Onizuka was an Hawaii-born astronaut who was on the ill-fated Challenger mission in 1986 that exploded 73 seconds after launch on his second spaceflight. He was born in Kealakekua over on the Kona side, and was the first Asian American and first person of Japanese descent to reach space, logging a total of 74 hours of spaceflight on his first mission.

There are a number of places named in his memory here in Hawaii (and apparently elsewhere in the U.S., according to the article about him; perhaps he's more famous than I thought). The cluster of buildings mid-way up Mauna Kea known colloquially as Hale Pōhaku is officially the Onizuka Center for International Astronomy, and the visitor center where I worked in 2012 is officially the Ellison Onizuka Visitor Information Station. There's a metal plaque of his face by the entrance to the latter, though I don't appear to have a picture of it.

I don't really have anything more to say about it, other than that I thought it's cool he's being remembered in the current U.S. passport design.

More Pictures from the Mountain

It's not a particularly creative post title, but at least it's accurate. Have some more pictures from Mauna Loa!

After several tries, I've come to the regretful conclusion that it's simply impossible to replicate the colors seen in the sunsets up here in a photo. They're just so incredibly breathtaking in the range of hues.

That being said, this picture comes pretty decently close. (This is the view from just outside our break room.)

May 1st we had a snowfall on the summits of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. This is pretty late in the season for snow, though it's possible to get snow any time of the year here; I still remember the time it snowed all the way down to the Visitor Center while I was working there—in June! (This snow doesn't extend that far down.) At a little over 11,000 feet (~3,350 meters) our site was too low to get any snow, though.

I like how the snow here is mostly only in one sector, not equally spread around the summit.

A few days later, on May 5th, the snow had all melted, but the focus is this old eruptive vent near the road—we stopped on the way down after some daytime observations. This is maybe fifty feet from the road, and perhaps twenty feet deep. I couldn't get a good picture of the inside because it's so large, perhaps thirty feet across.

I don't know how old it is—based on the weathering I'd guess somewhere within the past few hundred years—but it's incredible to imagine when this fissure was belching molten rock and gasses from the interior of the earth.

There are also several lava tubes visible beside the road up to the site. This is the largest and most visible, though it doesn't go anywhere on either side beyond where it collapsed here. You can see where the road goes maybe twenty feet beyond the far end. This is not the gaping hole closest to the road—just above the 9,000 foot marker is the opening to a small lava tube literally within two feet of the side of the road, though I forgot to take a picture of it. I'm hoping to take a weekend soon to explore some of these lava tubes, so hopefully I'll have more pictures soon. A hui hou!