A changing picture

Some of you might think I'm obsessed with sunsets. That's not actually the case, I prefer sunrises! Still, I tend to post a lot of sunset pictures here but it's not really by choice. I'm either working during the day or at night and often the only time I get a chance to get the camera out is between those shifts, i.e., sunrise or sunset.

Not being a morning person, you can see why the sunset shots predominate!

As it turns out, sunset or sunrise is normally the best time to take landscape pictures as the colours are much more intense during those times. During the middle of the day things tend to get washed out a bit and pictures are not so interesting. I've heard one or two stories that editors of photography magazines will simply not accept landscape photos if they are not taken during the "magic hour", i.e., the hour just after sunrise and the hour just before sunset. I don't know how true those rumours are but suspect there is something to it.

In fact you can take remarkably beautiful pictures before sunrise and after sunset. I think that's when the sky is at its best but often you need that sun just above the horizon to illuminate the scene such as mountains etc. For beautiful skies though, just after sunset is the best!

These two were taken a couple of days ago from my house. It's not the best place for sunset shots since I'm on the wrong side of the island for that and the utility lines tend to spoil things. Sometimes, though, I take a quick glance to the west and it looks stunning. So, even though I know I could take prettier shots elsewhere, I think it's better just to take a picture of what you think is beautiful whenever you get the chance. I'd have loved to have been on a sandy beach on the west side of the island when taking these two pictures but should I really put the camera away just because I'm not in the ideal spot? I don't think so!

The sun hasn't quite set yet, the higher cirrus clouds are only showing a hint of sunset colours but the lower clouds glow yellow/orange.

Fifteen minutes later the sun has set but the high clouds in the distance are illuminated by the reddened sunlight. The lower clouds are now in shadow.

A Thanksgiving thank you

Thank you to all who take the time to pop by my little blog. You mean a lot to me and to show my appreciation I thought I'd mention a few of you and your own blogs. This is in no particular order and I can't mention everyone and my sincerest apologies if I missed you out - just blame my altitude-addled brain!

Pam (Beep) is the most dear and wonderful friend who is suffering from a severe and life-threatening illness not helped by the crazy health system in the USA. She means the world to me. Pam has several blogs including Beep's Purple Personal Blog and Grrls Just Wanna Have Fun!. Her home page is Beep's Home on the Web. Please do take the time to visit and if there's anything you can do to help, even just to add a comment from time to time, it will help more than you think.

Keera, another California Girl(!), writes from her home in Norway and I always look forward to reading her beautifully written articles and photos of a place I think I'd love to visit! Her blog is called A Roll in the Universe.

Alice has been an online friend for years and has a wonderful blog called 10,000 Monkeys and & Camera. Like Pam and Keera, I have known her for many years and love her views on life and her photos. She also produces the most amazing food porn!

Hilary authors one of my favourite blogs, The Smitten Image. Stunning pictures and beautiful writing. And a dog called Benny! Hilary's blog is extremely popular and if you visit you'll find out why. I'm honoured to have Hilary visit my own humble offering and it means a lot to me.

Diane is a wonderful writer with a sense of humour I adore! I love her blog and always read it although I think she doesn't like the fact that I don't leave many comments. Well, dear, it's usually because I can't think of anything to say, your writing is just so much better than mine! Her blog is called Diane's Addled Ramblings and it's one of the best out there!

Then there's Lou Minatti over at, er, Lou Minatti. He is another friend I've known online for many years and a fellow skeptic. Although I think our political views are quite different he is just the nicest guy out there and has a very bright mind. I have a lot of time for you, Lou, and one day I'll visit Houston, but it'll have to be during the winter!

Like me, Andrew works on Mauna Kea although he tends to work the day shift. His is another blog with beautiful photos and a lot of astronomy as well as the most gorgeous underwater pictures. His blog is called A Darker View and really worth a visit!

Damon, one of the more prolific bloggers I know, has his own site called Damon Tucker's Blog which includes a lot of local news, but I think his achievement was the creation of the wonderful "From Big Island (FBI)" web site. I don't know how he keeps it up to date but it's a collection of the best Big Island blogs and tweets and is simply phenomenal. Do you want to visit the Big Island? Just visit that website to see views from a huge range of people that live on the island. I can't thank Damon enough for his work on creating and maintaining that web site.

Finally but definitely not least, there's Zuzana (Protege). What a wonderful and beautiful person. She can't say a bad word about anyone and even my most boring blog posts have a comment from her that are always so incredibly polite and complimentary. Is there anyone on this planet nicer than her? I don't think so. Zuzana's wonderful blog is called Life Through Reflections.

There are so many other people I'd like to mention. Ant is a friend and colleague whose photos blow us all away. Brad, another friend and colleague likes growing mustaches and writes some awesome software while being a new father. John hikes some of the most beautiful places on the planet and always writes so intelligently as well as showing us beautiful pictures from the Kona side. Blake is going through the same thing I did over a decade ago and trying to find a place to live on one of the most beautiful places in the world and Devany has already arrived, complete with the most incredible recipes you could imagine and some stunning sunrise views! Then there's Kahuku whose site I only recently discovered but fell in love with the photography in seconds.

I must have missed out several people and if so I do apologise, please let me know and I'll correct it. It wasn't deliberate.

Thank you again for spending a little time reading my blog, putting up with my occasional rants and leaving all your wonderful comments. It means so much to me!

Tom

Dear Mum, today we visited Mauna Kea and...

...found a really cool cherry picker!

With a couple of hundred people at the summit for sunset, nearly all watching another view of the sun slipping into the Pacific Ocean, a couple of people found something much more interesting to explore.

I know everyone's different, perhaps the guy is an engineer or something, but I was a little surprised to see a couple more interested in the contractor's cherry picker outside UKIRT than watch the sunset. They probably paid something like $400 to visit the summit on one of the commercial tours (the luminous orange clothing gives it away) and yet they were far more intrigued by the equipment left outside UKIRT, which is undergoing a paint job, than the wonderful and out-of-this-world view to the west.

Everyone to their own I guess...

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, everyone, and to those that do not celebrate Thanksgiving, which is pretty much the rest of the world apart from North America, have a wonderful day anyway. If it includes a close examination of a cherry picker, I can only wish that you have a fantastic time doing that!

Sunset on the Rainbow Isle

Few things beat coming back home in the evening after spending time on Mauna Kea's summit and seeing the most intensely coloured rainbow you could wish for as the sun is setting. There was no time to frame the shots in a nice way or go somewhere else to catch the ocean and shoreline as well, just time to go out on the upper lanai and take a couple of pictures. The rain shower that produced the rainbow was fast-moving and left little time to take a picture. I could have got back into my car and taken a couple of minutes to get to the nearby cliffs, but by then the rainbow would have gone.

Views from the tour

Well, I think everyone I took on the tour of Mauna Kea this past Saturday survived; the same number of people that went to the summit also managed to get back down to Hilo and I don't think we left anyone behind. I know one or two people had some issues with the altitude and for that I apologise although there's little I can do about that unfortunately. You never know who's going to do well at 14,000 feet and who won't. I've seen some of the fittest people I've ever met become a drooling and incoherent mess within a couple of hours yet people you think are going to do badly seem completely unaffected. The group I took up did rather well I think!

I didn't have much time to take photos during the visit as I spent most of the time chatting and describing the mountain as well trying to explain what astronomers do with the telescopes at the summit. I hope everyone managed to learn a little about what we do and the environment we work in. Unfortunately due to some summit-level clouds one of the hoped-for highlights didn't happen - opening the domes at sunset. Only one telescope actually opened while we were there whereas the others were all measuring high humidity and therefore couldn't open their protective domes as it would risk water condensing on the cold optical surfaces and electronics.

Still, the views were as stunning as ever but above all I met some new and wonderful friends!

A post-sunset view of Hualalai taken from just outside the UKIRT dome.

Submillimeter Valley and the setting sun, again taken from just outside UKIRT.

Shadows of the summit ridge telescopes on a cinder cone. Taken just outside the CFHT. Left to right the shadows are of the CFHT, Gemini and the UH 88-inch.

We saw most of the places on the mountain I'd recommend to visitors but I do apologise for not being able to locate the light switch inside the JCMT dome! It shows how many times I dare enter that place but I hope the subsequent torch/flashlight-led tour was still enjoyable! Jonathan and Tim, the guys working at the UKIRT that night, were also very gracious in letting us warm up in the control room shortly before we drove back down to a more oxygen-rich environment while answering all of my guests' questions. That was really appreciated!

Some of the tour group enjoying one of those special sunsets from Mauna Kea's summit.

Upcoming career move?

I'm going to be a tour guide tomorrow (Saturday). Six people who I've never met before will be taking the Mauna Kea summit tour with me as their guide. It should be fun especially as I can offer a little more than the normal MK tour companies - a guided tour of a submillimetre and infrared telescope plus watching the night crew in action taking data. I won't be charging nearly $200 for the tour as most companies do either, but tips are welcome! I just hope I'm not asked to point out the constellations, that might be embarrassing.

I hope it goes well, and I might even show my guests the best place on the summit for taking photos at sunset or sunrise. Oops, I gave it away in the picture.

What will they think of next?

I was almost taken out today by some driver who clearly wasn't looking out for traffic. Fortunately I saw the guy was doing something very unusual and since I drive rather defensively, as you have to do here, I managed to swerve out of his way. I really was waiting for the big crash but managed to put just enough space between our cars that we missed by inches. At the next stop he was behind me and very sheepishly raised his hand in apology - which I acknowledged although I was a little shaken. We all make mistakes after all.

It occurred to me that perhaps he was using this product. You have to read the reviews, they're priceless. A friend pointed out that the customer images are also worth checking out and indeed they are!

I wonder if they'll come up with a version for motorbikes. That'll be fun to see!

Tim Hawarden

Tim Hawarden. Picture courtesy of the ROE.

Further to my post a few days ago about Tim's sudden passing, the Royal Observatory Edinburgh now has an orbituary. I still can't believe Tim is no longer with us.

Above the cloud layer

When I was a kid I dreamed of being a pilot. I was going to fly for the Royal Air Force and then pilot airliners all over the world while visiting the most exotic locations on the planet - and being paid to do so. As things turned out, I'm not jetting the airways at 35,000 feet nor am I staying at luxury hotels on tropical beaches but I live in one of the most beautiful places on our planet and I do get to work above the clouds. Things didn't turn out too badly after all!


As ever, you can see larger versions of these post-sunset pictures from Mauna Kea's summit by clicking on them.

Evening colours

I'm glad to see most of the tour companies that visit the summit of Mauna Kea are staying longer after sunset than I remembering them doing in the past. Although the sunset is always beautiful (as long as it's not foggy) the best colours appear in the sky well after the sun has disappeared, often ten to fifteen minutes afterwards. It's great that the visitors have a chance to experience the sky at this time and some of the things I overheard this evening were good to hear, such as "this was the best trip I've ever been on!". It was helped, of course, by having very light winds and reasonably mild temperatures for this time of year (about 2 Celsius or about 36 degrees Fahrenheit).

We can't start observing until about 30 minutes or so after sunset since the sky is still too bright to find our guide stars so I have a little free time to take some pictures. Above is the sky in the west well after the sun had set. The colours were tremendous, deep red on the horizon, bright yellow above, some pink/orange stuff high up (Gobi Desert dust?) and then a deep blue overhead. The two peaks are Haleakala to the left and Pu`u Poli`ahu to the right. Below, to the south, Mauna Loa with some clouds being driven well over the saddle towards the leeward side of the island.