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
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!
Great video! There are probably a gazillion places I'd like to hang out to see what's going on and an observatory is definitely one of them. It's really cool to get to see this. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteThanks! This video took me a while and a few tries to get out. My first rendition ran for about twice as long and was really boring to watch, and the original ending with the drone was a lot more bittersweet—sort of a "faithful dog waiting for its master while freezing to death in the cold" vibe which was surprisingly emotionally intense, so I scrapped that and went for something more lighthearted and humorous instead. Also, I realized I never directly mentioned it in the video, but the drone was fine—it made a controlled emergency landing and as seen still had plenty of power left to record another few minutes of video. :)
DeleteGlad you changed that ending, you did that humor very well. I got the impression the drone was just fine. He was just waiting for the somewhat dense humans to figure out where he was. :)
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