Most links are to photographs ranging in size from about 100kb to 500kb. AVI movies can be played with Windows Media Player, QuickTime Player or VLC. QuickTime movies only work properly with Windows Media Player or QuickTime Player. The movies are up to 30Mb in size and may play better if saved to your own computer first.
Channel markers dot the waterways and every day ship after ship plies its way around the harbour. I was trying to capture lights on the breakwater one evening and suddenly a beautifully lit vessel appeared.
On the beachfront near downtown Hilo
is a Japanese garden.
A little further along is Banyan Drive with these outstanding Banyan trees. On the other side of the main road is a statue of King Kamehameha I, also known as Kamehameha the Great, who united all the Hawaiian Islands into a single nation. This statue is plentifully adorned in gold leaf. And uphill near the university is a planetarium that was only opened at the beginning of March 2006. Called "Imiloa", it blends traditional Hawaiian culture and ancient tradition with modern science. This was the first time I had seen a replica of Galileo's telescope and also the first time I'd seen myself in infrared. They had circles on the floor to demonstrate the
sizes of the telescope mirrors, but this turns out to be nothing like the real thing. Sizes, yes. Awesomeness, no.
It rains a lot in Hilo, so I was quite excited to see my shadow in the fishpond at our hotel. In two weeks, this was the one perfectly fine morning. Peter and I made the most of the
sunshine that day.
And when the sky eventually clears, you can see Mauna Kea from Hilo harbour. You can even make out the telescope domes on the summit. Of course, the day I left, the clouds had returned, but that made for a beautiful sunrise.
Some people take full guided tours from Hilo, but provided you have a 4WD vehicle, you can drive up to the summit yourself, as we did. A self-drive guided tour departs from the VIS every afternoon. It's important to stay focused when driving, because you have to watch out for invisible cows.
We travelled up in convoy and found the summit dappled with snow. Snowboarders were making the most of it. Here is a QuickTime movie (29Mb) of our arrival at the summit, showing the native Hawaiian shrine on the highest point off to the right of the road, and various domes around the summit crater rim.
We were given a tour inside one of the Keck domes. They moved the telescope around for us, but we still only got to see the back, not the front of the mirrors. This is an AVI movie (29.6Mb) showing the Keck telescope rotating one way and the dome rotating the opposite way.
We also toured the UH88 which is kept cool with glycol in the floor. This floor is at the same elevation at the actual summit of Mauna Kea.
The pictures of me in sunlight and Peter in snow attest to how fast the weather can change on the mountaintop.
The Research Trip
My research trip was the following week. I had been awarded two nights of observing time with the Gemini North Telescope (23rd and 24th March 2006). The accommodation for the astronomers is called Hale Pohaku (meaning house of stone, pronounced "hal-ay po-hah-koo) and my supervisor, Quentin, and I stayed there for 24 hours before going up to the summit. We walked up one of the nearby hills to get a view of Mauna Loa from the top. We could also look back and see the whole Hale Pohaku complex.
My room at Hale Pohaku was basic, but equipped with the omnipresent coffee machine. Fortunately, after a week of tea-withdrawal, I was able to get boiling water and milk at the cafeteria. Each of the telescopes has an office at "HP", and here I am in the Gemini Office. At the far end is the video-conference equipment. This is used for regular meetings between the Hilo office, the HP office, the telescope control room and also the other identical Gemini Telescope in Chile (Gemini, the twins!).
By the time my observing nights came around, more snow had fallen and weather conditions were appalling. We pulled up outside the Gemini facility and I thought we were alongside a shed. It turned out this was indeed the dome. My supervisor, Quentin Parker, was disappointed that this was his best view of the summit, which he hadn't seen since 1988. Also at right of the image is Simon Chan, who provided technical support (i.e. he runs the telescope). The dome was frozen shut and remained that way both nights. However, Quentin and I were given the grand tour of the Gemini Telescope. Simon showed us every floor and pointed out interesting bits: the spaceship (coating tank); cleaning facility; topple stoppers; cable spooler; and earthquake grippers.
I was so close to the mirror I could have put my thumbprint on it (but I didn't, honest!). By the way that's a 1-metre secondary.
And, of course, here's THE GEMINI TELESCOPE, with me and Quentin to give it some scale. The light from the stars strikes this main mirror, gets reflected back up to the secondary and then down again through the black tube at the centre of the main mirror to the instruments underneath. The tour also included the very best views of icicles on the ladder, icicles on the wall, and our support astronomer, Kristin, has
hair blowing sideways in the 50 mph wind.
Still, we had time to check on how the altitude was affecting us with a monitor to check blood oxygen and heart rate. This machine should read blood oxygen of 100 at sea level for a normal person. And since we couldn't make any observations of our own, Simon showed us the Gemini controls
and Kristin showed us an acquisition image from an observing run from the previous semester.
Before I left Hawai'i, I gave a talk for the Gemini people at the Hilo offices. It was a small audience owing to a local holiday for Prince Kuhio Day. But they quite liked my description of my observations of icicles, and in particular the way the icicles looked rather like an acquisition image when they were cropped just right.
So in spite of the fact I didn't get any data, I had a fantastic trip and sincerely thank Kristin, Quentin and Simon.
A little away from the main crater, you can walk inside a
lava tube. These tubes form when the surface on a river of lava cools and the top crusts over. The liquid lava continues to flow underneath. When the lava source is exhuasted, the hot runny lava just flows out, leaving a vacant tunnel. These are very dark inside. Here is an AVI movie in the lava tube (7.7Mb), but make sure you turn up the volume!
Where the lava reaches the sea, you can see the steam plume in the distance. If you drive down to the coast, there are spots where you get good views of the steam over the ocean. Walking around this landscape, you realise just how the
lava can
swallow up the trappings of man.
The place is full of patterns in the rocks and spooky landscapes. An AVI movie of the steam (11Mb) shows how it billows and the vertical streak dangling beneath it on the right is composed of fibres of silica that form explosively as the hot lava hits the cold water. The fibres are carried up by the hot steam and fall as they cool. They are romantically referred to as "Pele's hair" (Pele being the volcano goddess), but they're not very nice to breathe.
We did take in Captain Cook's Monument from a distance. Apparently there are no roads or walking trails to it - if you want to see it any closer than from across the bay, you have to go by kayak! That sounded like a bit too much splashing around. Instead, we toured the Hawaiian Royal Grounds. I wrote this bit in English because I can't pronounce Pu'uhonua o Honaunau. In the times when there was a royal family, this residence consisted of 10 or more thatched buildings. Some were constructed on huge rock platforms. There were huts for canoes and a temple and mausoleum guarded by wooden images called Ki'i. Maybe there was a guardian angel on my head, or maybe that was just another tourist!
I did venture back to the west coast on my last night in Hawai'i. I was feeling terribly star-starved and still hadn't seen Polaris (ever, in my life). The only stars I'd seen in two weeks were the Southern Cross, the False Cross and Omega Centauri skimming the horizon on the first of my two Gemini nights. So on that last night I drove over, found a golf course and a tennis court and used my northern hemisphere planisphere to find the little bear.
This web page commemorates the twentieth anniversary of my becoming an amateur astronomer, which occurred in April 1986, when we were visited by Halley's Comet.
