scenes from mauna kea

here is a compilation of gorgeous timelapse sequences taken on top of mauna kea in hawaii by sean goebel.   the telescopes, stars and clouds look lovely, but my favourite scenes show the lasers shooting into the sky for adaptive optics work.

observing: the story via twitter

some of you may use twitter, and some of you may not see the point of trying to communicate thru 140 character phrases. personally, i find twitter to be entertaining, interesting, and quite useful in my professional life. my opinion is that twitter can be worthwhile for anyone, you just have to follow only those people who post things of interest to you and ignore everyone else!

anyway, i have tweeted consistently throughout this observing run on mauna kea and i think those tweets tell a unique play-by-play story of the experience that i have not otherwise captured on this blog. each line is a single twitter entry. so you know, hashtags (#) are used to organize and identify various topics throughout twitter, and i've left them in this compilation... i hope you enjoy!


ACCLIMATION DAY/NIGHT (9000 ft)

i'm sitting in hilo surrounded by big-leaf plants and incredibly loud chirpy creatures!

breakfast of fresh papaya, fruit juice, and smooth kona coffee while watching the rescue of chilean miners.

i have a few hours this morning before i head up to mauna kea. i'm going to go swim with turtles, obviously.

sitting in hale pohaku at 9000 ft feeling a bit wobbly... and tired even though the sun hasnt set yet and i want to stay up past 2 am...?

wow, i just blew my nose and got incredibly light headed. high altitude does funny things to the body.

i've managed to stay awake past 1 am.... running out of things to do. what should i watch online?


NIGHT 1 AT SUMMIT (14000 ft)

managed to sleep for ten hours! now i'm excited to get to the summit, but still have to wait a few hours. work until dinner.

sitting at the summit of mauna kea! clouds make for a crappy observing night, but a lovely sunset. i'm feeling ok at 14000ft... for now!

in a hole right now/ clouds are on the horizon/ will be a long night #observinghaiku

major clouds, sucker holes, dying computers, and high-altitude wooziness - time for night lunch.

what we're trying to do is find find loads of new distant galaxies, but the clouds are not letting us!! :(

on an extinct volcano: http://bit.ly/crrvYL (blog post with pictures)

no wonder y'all are so quiet... its saturday. weekend observing is the worst. no, marginal weather observing is the worst. d'oh!

it takes water a long time to boil up here, and the kettle doesnt seem to know when its boiling!

the computers here talk to us sometimes: the male voice is like stephen hawking, but the female voice has a realistic british accent. huh?

oh no! i assumed lost season 6 was on hulu and i could watch it while observing... but its not! foiled.

the bad weather is holding steady :( we'll wait for 1.5 hrs more then head down.... unless the clouds clear, of course.

"Being a graduate student is like becoming all of the Seven Dwarves. In the beginning you're Dopey and Bashful."

"In the middle, you are usually sick (Sneezy), tired (Sleepy), and irritable (Grumpy)."

"But at the end, they call you Doc, and then you're Happy."


NIGHT 2

slept like crap; woke up in a thick cloud. should be an interesting and long night.

uh- oh. i'm bored and we're scheduled to be up here for another 8 hours.

my partner in astronomical crime for the evening just offered to make cappuccinos. divine.

meanwhile, we're collecting data in hopes of finding the smallest stars and/or the most distant quasars!

just went outside for ten minutes and saw six meteors whiz across the sky! its a crisp, cool, clear night illuminated by a bright moon.

also, i thought gemini's adaptive optics laser was green, but it looks red tonight...? ( http://bit.ly/bmcjoT ) anyone know?

i'm watching old josephine baker clips on youtube to stay awake.... wow could she dance!

clouds just came rushing in incredibly fast. guess thats it.... shutting down, packing up, and heading down the mountain.


NIGHT 3

the doorbell just rang. who knew observatories had doorbells?!?

ringing the doorbell was a lovely (~70 yr old?) aussie who claimed to be an "astronomy student" and asked politely to see the telescope.

so far every system we are using has failed and needed fixing... we've been in the dome for 27 minutes. we good for the night? or doomed?

"panspermia" is an oddly descriptive name for what it means http://bit.ly/3PuBVo

the telescope is touchy tonight.

clouds over mauna kea make for very frustrating observing, but absolutely gorgeous sunsets! http://twitpic.com/2yox0j

really bright star in this field whose light is reflecting all over inside the scope, causing crazy light streaks and artifacts. offset!!

the humidity has risen above 75%.... closing the dome for a bit to see if it drops again.

the gauge currently measures 102.5% humidity. hmmmm...

still over 100% humidity. dome is frozen in place. packin it up and callin it a night.


NIGHT 4

just woke up after a good sleep. getting ready to eat dinner - weather at the summit doesnt look good: humidity, high wind, maybe snow?!!

there's always potential for a random reunion when observing at mauna kea. my undergraduate professor is here!

visibility is about 30 ft at most on top of mauna kea right now. poor tourists wont get much of a sunset.

random reunion: at dinner i saw jonathan fay who i met last year at @dotastronomy in holland!?! #dotastro #smalluniverse

stuck in a cloud and this room ( http://bit.ly/aYZwFh ) for at least 7 more hours, unless the road starts to freeze and we have to descend.

the weather is teasing us now.... humidity has dropped to 90%, where it sits. we cant open until its consistently below 75%.

clouds have cleared, humidity has dropped, the air is still.... let the data collection commence!

looks like we will be up here all night after all.... time to make use of the super fancy espresso machine!!

it turns out 3 am at 14000 ft is not the best time to try to learn a new program.

was a mistake to leave my night lunch out in nature's refrigerator. its below freezing. d'oh!

soggy sandwiches and frozen fruit.

looks like we'll be working straight to the sunrise. thats a full 14 hour work night. #worthit


NIGHT 5

well, after the 14 hour work night, i slept 8.5 hrs and was woken up by my alarm clock so i could make it to dinner in time! whew!

its 5pm tuesday evening here, and 2 pm wednesday afternoon for collaborators in australia. what is "tomorrow" ?

cant say i was terribly impressed by the dinner offered tonight at hale pohaku. oh well, it will be another lovely sunset from the summit!

i keep asking "how faint" is it? he keeps telling me "how bright" it is. is this the astronomical "glass half full" conundrum?

clouds swept up over the mountain incredibly fast! we're sitting in supersaturated air, again. guess that means i should do real work...

it's as if we're Li'l Abner's Joe Btfsplk with this rain cloud perched above us! http://twitpic.com/2z7btm

ugh, i have a headache tonight. is the altitude finally getting to me? or am i sick of trying to finish this paper i'm working on?

so far this evening the humidity has ranged from 3.4% to 105.8%. crazy clouds.


NIGHT 6

last night on the mountain! clouds are wild, but hopefully they clear enough to let me see some orionids later! http://bit.ly/d8me57

right now the earth is passing thru the debris left by halley's comet, resulting in the orionid metoer shower. too bad the moon is ~full

collecting data for the first time in three nights. woohoo!!

when we are focusing the telescope to see if conditions are good enough to observe, sometimes i get the urge to yell "survey says...!"

mauna kea always offers interesting views: http://bit.ly/bydN6M

the moon is SO bright! watched for 10 minutes and only saw two orionid meteors near peak hour.

just found two instances in this paper where i typed "in this pork" instead of "in this work." the 1st really confused me!

nope. i cant see/find comet hartley with binoculars or IR monocular :( i blame the moon. http://bit.ly/aGUVgT

the full moon finally set, so i went outside to see several orionid meteors and to say goodbye to the stars of the northern hemisphere.

that's all folks, this observing run is over. i get to sleep for a few hours, then begin the two-day journey back to robin's hood. mahalo.

views from mauna kea

as this observing run on mauna kea draws to a close (tonight is my last night), i share another round of views from the volcano.

i never really get tired of these sunsets.


the nearly full moon is on the rise.


just a short hike from the telescopes takes you to that actual summit of mauna kea (on the right of the photo above, and shown below). some brave folks marched over to see the small monument built by hawaiians.


clouds in front of the sun can create some really interesting shadows and rays. when taking this shot, the sun was setting behind me and i couldnt see it at all thru the thick cumulus clouds.


below is an early morning photo with the sun rising behind me. the telescopes from right to left are the NASA infrared telescope facility (IRTF, where my old undergraduate professor is currently observing, small universe), the two keck telescopes (the biggest mirrors on the mountain), the japanese suburu telescope, and the submillimeter array. the little island peaking out of the clouds on the right is maui!


this is a sunrise view of the cabin at 9000ft where sleep happily greeted me after a 14 hour work night.


if you click to see the full photo below, you can see some telescope domes on the top of mauna kea! its rare to be able to see the peak from the ever-cloud-covered town of hilo.


aloha!

sunsets over mauna kea

clouds over mauna kea make for very frustrating observing, but absolutely gorgeous sunsets!

on an extinct volcano

aloha from the top of hawai'i!

i'm sitting at the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) and will be here for the next 5 nights. my last visit was about a year ago and i posted a few descriptions that you can read for more pictures and stories: scenes from mauna kea and twinkle twinkle little star (about adaptive optics).

the peak of mauna kea is at 14000 ft, which is really really high (about 3 times higher than the tallest peak in the UK). the potential effects of such a high altitude on the human body have forced this observatory to limit the amount of time that people are allowed to stay at the summit to 14 hours. which is fine with me - 14 hours is a long work day/night, especially at high altitude!

during observing runs on mauna kea, astronomers sleep at hale pohaku which is at 9000 ft. i spent one night there in order to acclimate to altitude, before coming up to the summit the next night. the photo below shows the buildings where we stay, the visitor center, and some cinder cones from the extinct volcano.


tonight is my first night on the summit, and i just reread the safety material they gave me which describes some of the minor symptoms of high altitude: headaches, drowsiness, nausea, loss of balance, altered mental state, and impaired reason.

i had a headache earlier, but it's gone now. the bathroom is down a flight of stairs and i have to remember to walk back up to the control room veeeerrrrrryyy ssslloooooooowly, or else i get light-headed and dizzy. the altered mental state and impaired reason is annoying when i cannot remember the right word for something, but slightly amusing when i mix my words up into some humorous mutation of what i actually mean to say.

the clouds are coming and going pretty rapidly tonight. we start an observation series and by the end the weather is too bad to result in useful data. i cant even go outside to enjoy the night sky because its hazy and too fuzzy. so for tonight, and the next five nights, this is my station:


the three screens on the right allow me to choose targets and control the observations. the middle three allow me to monitor the weather and quality of the data collected. the four screens on the left display the data after preliminary processing so i know whether things are running smoothly.

time for my night lunch...

earthquake in chile, telescopes seem undamaged

during the wee hours of the morning, a magnitude 8.8 earthquake hit chile southwest of santiago. there are several major observatories in chile which house some of the largest telescopes on earth. the gemini-south telescope lives at the southern-most observatory, which is about a 7 hour drive north of santiago. a friend has reported that he could feel a rumble at the telescope, but no damage occurred as a result of the earthquake and observations will carry on as normal tonight! i havent heard news from the other observatories, but they all live several hours farther north of the earthquake epicenter.

the earthquake generated a tsunami that is currently propogating across the pacific ocean. it is set to hit hawaii at 11 am local time. i have several friends using telescopes on mauna kea right now, and some in airplanes traveling there, so i'm sending positive thoughts their way! i'll keep you posted on any news as i hear it.

the big picture has an early set of photos from chile.

UPDATE: aside from some power outages and lack of communication soon after the earthquake, no major telescope facilities have suffered damage. the ESO facility in santiago reports no damage. the university in concepcion is another story... news from colleagues is that people they know working in concepcion have relocated to stay with friends in other cities (mainly santiago) until the infrastructure is fixed a bit. read more at SarahAskew.

scenes from mauna kea

i have one more night left on the top of mauna kea for this observing run with UKIRT, so i thought i'd share some photos from the week.

across the cinder cone valley from where our telescope is located, sits the suburu telescope (left), the kecks (center), then NASA's infrared telescope facility (IRTF):


on UKIRT's side of the cinder cone are (L to R) the canada france hawaii telescope (CFHT), the gemini-north observatory, and the university of hawaii's 88-inch telescope.


UKIRT pointing towards the zenith inside its dome:



UKIRT's 3.8 meter diameter primary mirror.



inside the control room.


a quirk of high altitude - inflated potato chip bags!


air pressure lowers as you go higher and higher in altitude. the pressure is still high inside the sealed bag, so the air inside pushes out as usual, but feels no resistance from the low-pressure air outside. so the bag puffs up! (this is also why its a good idea to put any bottled liquids in bags when flying!)


using the night vision goggles you can even more clearly see the gemini telescope's AO laser shooting up to the sky!


here's a view of the UKIRT telescope, the milky way galaxy (a bit saturated), and glowing lava!


i never get tired of the views of this 14000 ft mountain and its shadow in the distance.


and some fun with panoramas. the scope on the left is UKIRT.


lake waiau on mauna kea is the 7th highest lake in the US at 13000 ft. its a short, but exhausting walk from the summit to get there.



more photos here!

twinkle twinkle little stars

while sitting inside the control room of a telescope, we are isolated from seeing exactly what's happening with the weather outside, except for when we venture out into the cold to check the sky. i like to go out and check fairly often, acclimate my eyes to the darkness, see the stars... but its cold and conditions can change rapidly enough, that its necessary to have weather monitoring devices working all the time (if possible!).

inside UKIRT's control room, there is a screen showing the realtime view from an all-sky camera! the image below shows that view... you can see the telescope on the left side and the milky way galaxy streaming across the sky!


the green plus sign is where our telescope is pointing and the little yellow crosshairs show the position of a companion telescope. at the upper left, above the white telescope, you can see a fainter silver dome with a big line shooting out of it! that is the laser used by the gemini telescope adaptive optics system. the laser is clearly visible when i go outside, and i think its great fun to watch it change positions!

so what are adaptive optics and why do we shoot lasers into the sky??

because photons of light from distant stars get shaken up as they pass thru the earth's atmosphere, causing them to "twinkle" to our eyes. the more the photons get shaken up, the bigger and "fuzzier" objects appear in a telescopic image (this is the major advantage of putting telescopes in space). if we can somehow determine the turbulence in the atmosphere as the photons pass thru it, we can correct for it and get sharper images of the stars!

adaptive optics is a fascinating technique that has recently come in to use by several major telescopes around the world to improve the image sharpness. to correct for atmospheric distortions, you use a specific guide star, a quick computer to measure how the star "twinkles", and a special deformable mirror that sits inside the optical path of the telescope.

the computer measures the changing light coming from the guide star every millisecond or less, then rapidly sends signals to adjust the shape of the special mirror in order to immediately correct for the "twinkle." if there is no natural guide star bright enough to use in the part of the sky that you happen to be observing, you can create an artificial guide star with a laser! a "laser guide star" it's called.

here's a nice example of how impressively the use of adaptive optics can improve image quality!


pretty amazing difference, no? adaptive optics systems are incredibly complicated to develop and produce, so not all telescopes use them, but they become more important as telescope mirror sizes increase.

now to go check the sky....

successful journey to the big island

i arrived on the big island with about a day and a half to enjoy before i had to start working. i stayed with a friend near the southeast coastline and certainly fulfilled the desire to have a quick island adventure holiday!

my confused body demanded sleep soon after i arrived, and awoke in time to admire the sunrise over the ocean!


we walked across a lava field...


saw beautiful flowers...


relaxed at a black sand (clothing-optional) beach...


enjoyed the company of a friendly dog named rufus...


went snorkeling... (last time i visited this part of the island, i didnt have the waterproof case for my camera!)...



saw lava trees...


and cooked some fresh ahi for dinner! very nice.

now i'm up at the 9000 ft astronomer's residence, called hale pohaku (HP). i have to stay here for the night to begin to acclimate to the altitude and night schedule. tomorrow evening i head up to the 14000 ft. summit!

meeting a new telescope!

(a little too) bright and early tomorrow morning i leave for my first trip back to the states since i moved to england almost exactly one year ago!

the first stop is hawaii where i will have about 36 hours of free time before heading up the extinct volcano to meet a new telescope! i'm observing with the 3.8 meter united kingdom infra-red telescope (UKIRT) for the first time. i'll spend 7 nights awake at the summit of mauna kea observing targets for the UKIDSS project.



after the observing run, i'm going back to my hometown in ohio to see my family in person for the first time in over a year! woohoo! this is the longest stretch i've gone without seeing them and i'm really thrilled to get in some family time!

hotel mauna kea

here's a clever and hilarious little video created by astronomers who regularly visit mauna kea, hawaii to use NASA's infrared telescope facility (IRTF). they created this parody of the song "hotel california" ... most likely while they were stuck killing time during a night of bad weather. they successfully capture the joy and frustrations of observing anywhere!


observing can be incredibly fun, but it's also challenging when your brain cant concentrate or think properly due to the lack of oxygen at high altitude. when things go wrong, computers break down or your data looks funky, it can get a little chaotic trying to figure out what the problem is! an additional challenge is that absolutely nothing is "standard" about operating any telescope anywhere! they are all unique beasts that get tweaked and adjusted over time so that they work! when you use one many times you get used to its methods and particular quirks, but of course these things change over time.

remember that this all assumes the weather is good enough to open the dome and observe the sky! when the roads are so bad, you cant even drive to the 14,000ft summit of mauna kea, you relax at hale pohaku where the dorm rooms are, at 9000ft. in the video they show some footage of an available time killer... the dart board! there's also a ping pong table and a good-as-can-be-expected pool table! they also highlight some other familiar scenes that many astronomers visit during their brief time off the mountain!

most observatories have a collection of games or things to entertain astronomers during bouts of bad weather.... there is the option to work uninterrupted thru the night, which sometimes is very nice... but i find that my brain shuts off after 2 am and i can no longer concentrate. so i get to know the astronomers using the other telescopes, drink a beer, play cards, read a book... it can be dangerous to try to solve an old puzzle sitting around because inevitably pieces have been lost over the years! observing is much more fun when the skies are clear!

exploring lava tubes

today is my last day in hawaii :( i leave this afternoon to head back to austin, where i arrive tomorrow! long travel day/night. it's been a productive trip... and a lot of fun too!

monday was a holiday, so some of the astronomers here took me on an adventure hiking thru some remote lava tubes! we walked about 2 miles across lava fields, found a tiny hidden entrance to the caves, and then hiked in for about a mile... it's hard to judge distance underground, so who knows how far we went!

most of the lava inside the caves had a sparkly, silver tone, but sometimes there were flows of bright orange or red! cool stuff!









many parts of the cave were split into 2 levels. here you can see a huge fallen chunk of lava! that sort of sight kept me constantly looking for big cracks or potential lava flows from the end of the cave!!




cave poop....




there were a couple rooms in the cave with ceilings covered by these crazy lava stalactite things! they didnt hang straight down either, but rather at distinct, yet uniform angles!