Tsunami day!

Well, by now you may have seen the news that a magnitude 8.9 earthquake struck off the north-east coast of Japan about 7:46 PM local time on Thursday, and we now have a tsunami warning in effect for the entire island chain. The tsunami sirens went off at 10 o’ clock, and will probably be going off every hour on the hour till the warning is lifted or the tsunami hits, which is predicted to be about 3 AM Friday morning. Thankfully, we're located outside the evacuation zone, far enough that I'm not too worried about it. In fact, I'm most excited about the possibility of not having school tomorrow. Tsunami day!

Further updates as conditions warrant, i.e., I'll let you know tomorrow how it went. Hopefully it will be like last year, a rather boring and uneventful happening, and we'll simply get a school-free day out of it.

Pizzicato

Earlier this evening I took some time out of my busy schedule of doing homework to go see Beethoven's 9th symphony ("Chorale") played at the UHH theater on campus. Beethoven's 9th Symphony is arguably the greatest work of one of the greatest composers in history and a personal favorite of mine, so it was well worth it. And if I noticed a missed cue here or there, or a note that was off, or the fact that the choir was singing the German words with a decidedly American accent, what of it? Its beauty transcends such things.

Actually going to the theater and watching the performance reminded me of an occasional musing of mine on the nature of recorded music. Ever since Edison invented the phograph, the ability to hear music has been divorced from a need to actually have someone play it. In some ways, this is both a good and a bad thing. I like the ability to buy a recording of a piece of music and be able to listen to it as much as I want, and I'm quite thankful for it, but simply listening to recorded music without the presence of the orchestra somehow diminishes it. It's like enjoying a delicious meal, but not being able to smell it, or taking a cool refreshing drink and not being able to taste it. Neither are absolutely essential for the enjoyment of the thing, but they are both add a certain other charm without which neither is complete.

As an example, I learned there's a lot more pizzicato in Beethoven's 9th symphony than I knew before. The sight of the entire string section's bows swaying to and fro while they plucked their strings inspired a poem about it, to the same meter as the “Ode to Joy” (An die Fruede) theme.

Like a wind-swept reedy wetland,
So each deft string player's bow;
Guided by each masterful hand,
While playing pizzicato.

As they play, with bows a-shiver,
Like a windy reed-strewn glade;
Bending, swaying, all a-quiver,
Thus is pizzicato played.

I also discovered just how much work clapping is when I applauded with the rest of the theater for nearly five minutes straight at the end.

Distance and Perspective

I had originally planned to blog about Facebook's disturbing decision to start releasing phone numbers and home addresses of its members tonight, but while working on the slideshow for a presentation I'm giving for my seminar class on Friday I came across something that changed my focus. Broadened it, you might say.

First of all, take a look at the picture below:

This is a galaxy very far away. I don't know what it's called or I'd tell you. It comes from the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, the farthest and deepest picture of the universe ever taken. Now, I don't know what the size of this galaxy is, but let's pretend it's about the size of our own Milky Way, about 30 kiloparsecs or 100,000 light years across. It looks a lot like what we think the Milky Way would look like from the outside, so it's a reasonable fancy. At this scale, of course, our Sun would be absolutely impossible to see. If we imagine this galaxy to be like the Milky Way, it probably has in the range of 100-400 billion stars.

Now, take a look at the picture below:

This is the Hubble Ultra Deep Field in all it's glory. See the biggest galaxy there in the lower right? That's the one in the first picture above. Now, there are an estimated 10,000 galaxies in this picture. Almost every single point of light that you see is another galaxy, with anywhere from a few million to hundreds of billions of stars in it (I've only found five foreground Milky Way stars in the picture so far). Now go back and look at the first picture again, but this time don't look at the bright, attention grabbing spiral in the middle. Despite its distance, that galaxy is practically next door compared to the other galaxies you see in the picture. Look at the tiny blobs of light in the background. Those are some of the farthest objects ever observed by man. Many of them are in the 10-13 billion light year range, or around 60 trillion billion miles away. Now just sit and think on that for a while. It helps to keep in mind that this picture covers an area roughly one thirteen-millionth of the sky.

As to the point of this post...well, I'm afraid I don't have any trite take-away message. All I can say is that it helped me regain a useful perspective on life for when I start taking myself too seriously and worrying too much about things. Some might find it depressing...I find it awe-inducing, that we can observe such indescribably awesome scenes. My hope is that this will change your perspective in some way today. After all, it's pictures like this that remind me why I chose astronomy as my life's profession.

When I consider Your heavens, the work of your fingers,
The moon and stars, which you have ordained; 
What is man that You take thought of him,
And the son of man that You care for him?
Yet You have made him a little lower than God,
And You crown him with glory and majesty! 
 Psalms 8:3-5

Space Art

This week one of my space art pictures I created was published in the school newspaper. It was done back in 2008, when I first realized that due to open-source computer graphics programs, making high-quality graphical art was no longer just for dedicated professionals. The realization that I could, on my own, with a bit of work invested, create pictures (of astronomical subjects, primarily) that could hold their own in an art contest was quite intoxicating.

Fictitious Solar System 3: moon around gas giant.

At that point my work was entirely 2-D. I had had GIMP installed on my computer for a while but one day while browsing its website I came across a plugin that would automatically create simple planets. I was hooked. I figured out how to draw stars (and yes, every one of those stars is hand drawn) and nebulae and within a couple of weeks had turned out several (O.K., 3) pictures of fictional solar systems. That's basically what sparked the interest I have in computer graphics that I have to this day. It was only a few months later that I found out about Blender and graduated to 3-D modeling. I made one rather forgettable picture of an astronomical nature with it before getting busy with school and work, and running into snags with the next project I had in mind, which remains uncompleted to this day. Maybe I should brush it off and have another try sometime...

Edit: And here's that self-same project, finished a few months later!

Clouds a-flame.

In my last post, I put up some incredible pictures from Mauna Kea from an arduous journey through a hostile environment (the summit of Mauna Kea is not friendly towards humans even at the best of times). But today I was reminded that beautiful sights can come to you when you least expect it, sometimes without even leaving your living room. This afternoon I looked up from my computer to see this amazingly scenic sunset taking place over Hilo:

We had quite a thunderstorm last night, so the local weather patterns might have had something to do with it.

Edit (3/1/11): Turns out this is my 150th post! I didn't realize I have that many already...

Orographical Excursions.

Heart of the Mountain (click for larger view).

Sunday I got to hike the Mauna Kea summit trail as part of a trash clean up crew. Our job was to hike down the trail from the summit to the Vis, picking up rubbish along the way. It was an amazing experience, albeit an exhausting one. The trail runs fairly straight for about six miles, dropping in elevation about four thousand feet along the way. Near the top, I got to see Lake Waiau for the first time, which was really nifty. The thin air was chilly at that elevation, but not too cold. I worked up a sweat early on from collecting trash, but settled into a fairly comfortable temperature equilibrium quickly thereafter.

Sitting at an elevation of 13,020 feet (3970 m), Lake Waiau (whose name means ‘swirling water’ although it doesn't really do anything but sit) is among the highest lakes in the world, and is one of the very few lakes in the Hawaiian islands. (As an aside, the word ‘lake’, much like the word ‘planet’ until recently, has no formal definition. So the ‘highest lakes in the world’ list can change quite a bit depending on what the person making personally considers a lake.)

Edit (3/6/18): I've created an updated panorama using Hugin, but you can still see the original my mousing over the image.

Panorama of Lake Waiau. I somehow lost the right-most photo in the transfer process.

Lake Waiau is a pretty interesting lake from just about any perspective. Geologically, it's quite strange. It sits in the crater of Puʻu Waiau, a large shallow cinder cone whose bowl is lined with enough clay to hold the water in. It has no inlet, instead being fed with melting permafrost from the mountain, so its level fluctuates quite a bit depending on the snowfall each year. You can see a higher shoreline in the picture below, showing the lake from a higher perspective:

Lake Waiau as seen from the trail into the puʻu.

Biologically, Lake Waiau hosts some really extreme algae. The overall impression of the color of the lake you get when you're actually standing by it is green. Who knows how they survive – the lake freezes over almost every year, I've heard – but survive and thrive they do. I suppose they probably photosynthesize from the abundant sun (Mauna Kea is sunny well over three-quarters of the year) and feed on the nutritious volcanic soil the lake bed is composed of. On another note, Lake Waiau serves as a sort of oasis on the desert-like upper slopes of Mauna Kea. We saw some hardy grasses clinging to the rocks around the rim, something we didn't see again till we had descended almost three thousand feet.

I don't know what that algae is, but it sure is tough!

Lake Waiau also hosts some interesting surprises. While walking around it on garbage patrol, I was quite startled to feel the ground beneath my feet give slightly, then spring back like a trampoline. Tentative repeated pressing showed it wasn't a one-off event - the ground really was somewhat springy. The patch was rather large - I found intermittent springy parts as I continued walking around the lake. I've no idea what caused it, although I suspect the algae may be involved somehow. Perhaps mats of dried algae under the lake shore that are slightly springy?

The bouncy terrain is further along the shoreline in this photo.

Climbing out of Puʻu Waiau we were greeted with this majestic vista:

Those aren't car tracks, just two
parallel foot-paths (feet-paths?).

After a short lunch break, we began the long arduous trek downwards. I didn't get too many pictures at this time, as I was more focused on looking for trash and trying to keep my footing  as we wended our way down, around, and over the incredible landscape of the mountain. Most of the first few hours were spent clambering over glacial deposits or the hard dense Hawaiite formed when Mauna Kea erupted under its glacial blanket. The hot magma hitting the cold ice caused it to become extremely dense, making it an excellent tool material for a people with no deposits of metal ores to smelt. The ancient Hawaiians mined it for adzes, and there are scores of abandoned adze quarries around the summit. The adzes were rough-shaped on the mountain before being taken down and finished, and the piles of chippings are visible from quite far away. Indeed, the trail passed just below one that stood several times higher than myself:

This is even more impressive when you realize each chip
is roughly the size of your hand...and the pile is taller than you.

A little further on we passed a puʻu with a distinctive crater rim that I don't remember having seen before, despite the fact that it ought to be visible from the road. I need to look into that further...

Mauna Kea is an interesting mountain, because it's so big and flat near the top that you can kind of forget you're on a mountain at all because you can't really see down. Around this point on the trail it starts to slope off enough that you can look down and see Mauna Loa, the Saddle beneath you, and even Hualālai if you're lucky.

Edit (3/6/18): I remade the original panorama that was here with Hugin, and it turns out that in making it manually I somehow managed to collapse the central part of the image in an interesting way. You can mouse over the new panorama to show the original and see what what I mean.

Note the varied terrain to be found on the slopes of Mauna Kea.

Hualālai is just visible at the far right.

As we drew closer to the Vis at the 9,200 foot mark we started to notice familiar landmarks seen from unfamiliar angles. We also started to see vegetation again!

Notice how the path drops off as we
come to the really steep part of the trail.

As we crested the last rise and saw the welcoming buildings of Hale Pōhaku spread out before us, well, it was a sight for sore eyes, let me tell you! (and sore legs too!)

I've said it before, but “Little House on
 the Big Mountain” fits so well here. Quite idyllic.

All in all, it was a great trip, and I'm glad I went, even if my legs are complaining today! (I'm so thankful today is a holiday and I don't have to hike a mile to school and back.) I had a wonderful time, especially getting to see the elusive Lake Waiau. If you ever have the chance to hike the Mauna Kea summit trail I'd highly recommend it, although I'd make sure to plan for at least seven hours (at least) if you're hiking up rather than down.

Hannny's Voorwerp

A couple weeks ago I wrote a short post about Hanny's Voorwerp, a mysterious object discovered recently through the Galaxy Zoo program. Not too long after that, I stumbled upon this awesome Hubble image of the Voorwerp:

IC 2479 & Hanny's Voorwerp

At the top you can see the galaxy IC 2479, its spiral structure clearly visible. Below it is Hanny's Voorwerp in all its glory. The green color comes from excited oxygen, while near the middle of the picture the yellow glow comes from where the gas is being compressed to form new stars. This is one of those cases where a picture is worth a thousand words, and since I don't feel like writing a thousand words tonight, you get this pretty picture instead. A hui hou!

February the 14th

So, I completely forgot to mention the date on Monday. Yes, the 14th of February is the day that we celebrate some of those things that bring joy into our lives, and the man responsible for it all. I'm talking, of course, about National Ferris Wheel Day, named after the brilliant American engineer George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. His brainchild the original Ferris Wheel was conceived in response to a challenge by the directors of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition as something to match the Eiffel Tower, which had been unveiled in 1889. Things took off from there, and there are now hundreds of ferris wheels to be found across the globe. Try and ride one next Ferris Wheel Day!

Déjà vu

I was standing on the street corner when the little white man first appeared across the street. The action was so sudden that at first I blinked at him in incomprehension, owl-eyed. I stood there staring at him for a moment, my brain struggling to take in what I had just seen. I could feel something tugging at the back of my mind, telling me that I had been in this situation before, that there was something I needed to do, but I tried unsuccessfully to determine what it was. The little white man seemed to be beckoning somehow, bidding me emulate him in some way. I racked my brain for what an interminable length of time, before suddenly, in a flash, everything became clear...

The world seemed to shiver and somehow right itself, as if waking from a dream, and I realized that I needed to hurry up and cross the street before the Little White Man was replaced by the Blinking Red Hand.

Perhaps the fact that this actually happened to me this morning is my body's way of suggesting I get more sleep?

Edit (2/13/11):  And since a friend asked me today, yes, I did manage to cross the street safely. The events described above took about a half-second in actuality.

To an Oil Droplet

by Daniel Berke

The oil drops, wee points of light,
Like distant suns, in splendor bright,
Fall slowly through the air.
Like autumn leaves upon the breeze
They whirl, and with measur'd ease,
Descend beneath my stare.

Like snowflakes borne on winter's gale,
On drafts unseen, the droplets sail
Till from my sight they pass;
In constellations animate,
The droplets churn, each one alit,
An orb of golden glass.

A radiant shimm'ring symphony,
Of stars, a very galaxy,
Before my eyes doth sway;
And just like leaves, they slowly fall,
Down to the earth, like objects all,
And gently fade away.

And then, O thing most wonderful!
When impulses electrical,
Are to the drops applied:
They slow, they stop, reverse their course,
As though compelled by unseen force,
Back up their shaft to ride.

And when the current's off once more
Their paths again turn towards the floor,
A myriad dancing lights.
Nothing now impedes their motion,
Save the air, which like an ocean,
Slows their headlong flights.



You have been reading a poetic description of the author's encounter with the famous Millikan oil drop experiment, in iambic tetrameter. With catalexis.