The night shift II

I won't be showing too many more summit sunset pictures for a while I think and suspect that my blog might go into a relatively quiet period for a couple of months. I'm not scheduled for the night shift again until the end of January and I'm taking a bit of leave during January as well - it's been almost a year since I last took any significant time away from work and am really looking forward to it!

In the meantime I'm now moving to the day shift and will still be visiting Mauna Kea's summit once in a while with the engineers and technicians but I have to admit the opportunities to take pictures up there are a little more limited during the day, but I'll see what I can do!

In fact I was hoping to take a bunch of photos today showing the massive surf that was forecast to hit us late today, but when I went down to the nearby cliffs the ocean was like a mill pond. North Oahu is forecast to be hit by an unbelievably massive surf overnight and over the next couple of days. Wave heights of up to 50-feet are expected and some reports seem to indicate the surf may be as high as 60-feet in some sets. That's truly hard to imagine. I've seen 25 to 30-foot waves and that was one of the most awesome sights I have seen - I can't quite picture what waves double that height might look like. There will be surfers out in that ocean violence as well, but only the most experienced. It looks good for the Eddie Aikau Quicksilver surf contest tomorrow, the most prestigious one in the world which is only held when the surf gets this big!

Down here on the Big Island we get shielded from these massive north west swells by the other islands but the forecast is still calling for some truly large surf, even for the cliffs near me - perhaps up to 20-foot waves. I'll have another look tomorrow evening when I get back from work and if I don't check in you might want to call the US Coast Guard!

Norman of Nottingham

I don't actually know this guy's name so I'm calling him Norman for now. He's a mascot of The University of Nottingham Astronomy Group and he's currently observing at the summit of Mauna Kea. Apparently he accompanies astronomers from the group all over the world when they go observing and tries to help at night although I found him a little unresponsive when I gave him the safety briefing and explained how to use our telescope.

He seems to be a little short-sighted as well but at least he tried to fit in by wearing his aloha shirt and sunglasses despite not being appropriate clothing for the summit. He's been here before so he ought to have known about the requirement for wearing cold weather gear. Still, it's always a pleasure to see Norman again.

I can't strictly call The University of Nottingham my alma mater since I was wasn't a student there, but I did spend two-and-a-half years in Nottingham as a postdoc although this was before there was an astronomy group at the university - I worked in the chemistry department for a small but very active astrophysical chemistry research group which is still going strong I'm very pleased to say.

It was a fun two years and I love Nottingham despite some of the problems the city has had over the last few years and I have to say the university campus has to be among the most beautiful anywhere in the UK. I return fairly regularly as I still collaborate with university staff and still have many good and dear friends there. Of course it's always a real pleasure to have them out in Hawai`i visiting us!

The night shift

A moonlit panorama of Mauna Kea's summit area taken at 3:20 in the morning believe it or not. This is always the worst part of the night. The body and brain want to sleep so badly and often I'll step outside into the freezing night-time temperatures just to wake myself up. When the sky is clear and there's no moon the sky can be dramatic, you hardly need to get dark adapted to see the Milky Way and a sky full of stars. On the other hand when the moon is up the night sky can look quite dull but then you get to see the rest of the mountain and the observatories at work. When the wind is calm it's very quiet except for the occasional distant hum of a telescope slewing. This is always the time and view that reminds me of how remote we are as an island and also as a planet.

From left to right: the Hualalai volcano and then Pu`u Poli`ahu which legend has it is the home of the snow goddess of Mauna Kea. In the shadow of Poli`ahu are the CSO, JCMT and the SMA. On the ridge the Subaru and twin Kecks are visible with Maui's Haleakala in the far distance.

Mauna Loa

When the inversion layer is low the summit of Mauna Loa and its western slopes are visible from my home away from home. Unfortunately we don't have too many windows to look through at the summit as the other observatories might get a little annoyed whenever we turn the lights on. Those wanting to take photos of the summit views have to step outside and brave the cold and wind, but it's worth it.

The vog and clouds in the saddle between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa always fascinate me. Click on the picture to get a closer view of them.

Someone reads my blog!

There was a flurry of comments in a post of mine and wondered if I'd said something controversial or perhaps mentioned Tiger Woods by accident. Turns out it was thanks to a post by Hilary over at "The Smitten Image" who is under the impression that I wrote something interesting. In a sudden fit of altitude-induced scientific curiosity, I checked google analytics to see where these comments had come from.

I don't do that very often because this blog is essentially my diary, it just happens to be online and people are welcome to read it. On the other hand, I learned something very interesting tonight.

Apparently there is only one person who reads this blog and therefore, according to google and the internet (from which everything that is true emerges) they live well north of the Arctic circle a few hundred miles offshore of Greenland's east coast. I'm impressed by the number of personalities this person has used when commenting on my blog!

So, to my reader out there in a trawler or lightship, perhaps the captain of a stranded Russian nuclear submarine or maybe a polar explorer stuck in the ice with their ship crushed by mother nature and with his friends frozen to death or eaten by polar bears, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to read my blog. Do you need me to send a rescue team?

It's from the internet, it must be true.

Whaddya lookin' at, eh?

Watching me watching you.

Chasing the green flash

Over thirteen years of working on Mauna Kea, eighteen since I first visited and over a thousand nights spent on the summit and I have yet to see the green flash from the mountain. Even more frustratingly, I know it's occurred while I've been outside watching the sunset because someone on their first trip to Mauna Kea, just a week and a half ago, caught it photographically and decided to rub salt into my wounds by publishing it on Facebook! I was there that night and gave the guy a lift back down. Grrr. I should have stolen his camera and left him at the summit!

Only joking, Eric!

The aftermath

Well, last night's storm created a little excitement around here and Mauna Kea experienced its second snowfall of the winter. I wasn't at the summit but the various webcams on Mauna Kea caught the the early-morning scene although within a few hours most of the snow had already melted - it's still a little early in the season for the really bad snow storms we see from time to time and the daytime temperatures and sunlight are usually sufficient to melt the snow quickly.

UKIRT's webcam caught the snow covered road a little after 8am. The tracks in the snow were probably left by the rangers on their early morning inspection of the summit. They closed the road for a while until the snow had melted.

The webcam on Gemini captured the CFHT, MKAM and the snow field in between.

To the south, one of the NOAA Mauna Loa Observatory webcams captured Mauna Kea in the early morning light with snow on the summit, although as you can see the snow was clearly contained to the summit area and didn't extend much further down than a few hundred feet. Occasionally it can snow all the way down to Hale Pohaku at the 9,000 foot level.

By sunset this evening, the snow had nearly all gone.

At home it wasn't so pretty! Although I didn't hear anything overnight (the wind and rain was a little too loud and of course I'd closed all the windows!) this morning I found a couple of trees had come down, I assume due to the wind.

This one barely missed my car, it was literally inches away, the end of the branches had snapped off when they hit the ground and were actually under the car! I don't think the tree is that healthy which probably explains why it fell.

I have no idea what the tree is called, sorry, but looking up at the branches this is where the it had clearly snapped overnight. Looking round a little more, I saw several other places where branches had snapped off but I couldn't find the branches! This is actually right on the boundary between my yard and the neighbouring uncleared land which is difficult to access as it's overgrown, so I assume the fallen branches are over there somewhere.

Out in the front yard I found a piece of my rooftop TV antenna. I don't think reception's going to be very good for a while! Incidentally, that trunk in the ground used to be underneath the "lawn", you wouldn't have known it was there. The unusually bad storms of the last couple of years plus summer droughts have eroded my top soil so badly that it now protrudes a couple of inches above the ground.

The infamous glowing picnic table effect

Stupidly, I forgot I had left my camera out in the top lanai on its tripod. When I was closing all the doors and windows in panic last night I suddenly saw that the tripod had been blown over and the camera was lying on the wet lanai floor. I brought it in immediately, dried it off and turned it on. It seemed to work although I didn't take any pictures. My first attempt at taking a picture when I arrived home this evening, however, resulted in this:

Uh oh! Why was my picnic table and bench glowing like this? I was obviously a little concerned that I'd damaged the camera or had my table taken on some ghostly paranormal-like properties during the storm?

Turns out it appears to be something to do with the circular polarizer I habitually keep on the camera lense. When I took it off the pictures looked normal again. Although I had cleaned and dried the filter, and it looked good to my eye, something was up with it. I'm going to leave it in its case with some desiccant and perhaps a few grains of rice and see if that fixes the problem. I should understand how a polarizer might cause such an effect, but am going to have to think about it...

Stormy night

Heavy rainfall, the threat of thunderstorms and a strong northerly wind is flooding the back yard and the lanais. My house is orientated so that the lanais face north and in the summer they're a relatively cool place to stay. With this type of storm, however, it's a bit of a disadvantage as I realised when I arrived home this evening.

All the windows are shut (that's pretty rare here) and despite that my computer monitor is wobbling like mad because the wind is making the house shake! I hope the promised thunderstorms don't make an appearance, I could do without that.

Don't look directly at the sun

It's dangerous for your eyes and plays havoc with the exposure meter on your camera.