Fiery sunsets

Three sunset pictures from the last few days of the Celeste run at UKIRT. Not my best but it was really windy on those days. The winds calmed down on the last couple of nights but the clouds had dissipated by then so the sunsets were kind of boring and I didn't bother - I was also a little busy those nights. You never know, maybe this time next year I'll get another chance to take some Mauna Kea sunset shots!

Subaru and a setting sun. The Subaru observatory is closed right now due to a nasty incident they had with some glycol. I hope things get fixed and cleaned up soon. I was told they might be looking at being closed for six-months but they have recently sent out an email about their next laser show later this month, so am assuming they'll be open again very soon.

The NASA IRTF with some summit-level clouds at sunset. It almost looks as though there's a brush fire nearby, but the colours are simply due to the sunset. Despite a good forecast most of the summit observatories remained closed this night due to fog although one or two managed to open towards dawn when the clouds finally decided to leave.

The CFHT the same evening. It had an amazing glow from sunset clouds in the valley but thick mid-level clouds everywhere else made opening up impossible.

Incidentally, our visitors from NASA Goddard went home today very happy especially after a great last night on the summit. Conditions were excellent and they took a lot of superb data on Saturn and its storm, Uranus and Jupiter. I even found a little time to take some more data on Pluto not that I'm a planetary scientist or anything, just wanted to see how our image quality was holding up and if there were any changes. Pluto and its moon Charon were pretty obvious in the 2.2-micron data.