Tourist industry in decline?

The number of tourists visiting the Hawaiian islands had dropped dramatically over the last few months due to the dire economy and higher than usual airfares. I think only Kaui`i has seen tourist numbers rise or at least stay the same. This is, of course, bad news for the state as tourism is the largest industry.

On the other hand, the number of tourists that visit the summit of Mauna Kea seems to keep growing. I have no numbers to quote, only a subjective observation of the number of people and tour vans here each evening. This is a tuesday night and numbers are what I'm sure we used to get at the weekends. Now the summit is literally swarming with tourists on a Saturday and Sunday. I wonder how shares in those tour companies are doing?

One of the best sunset viewing spots is in the picture below, between the UKIRT and the new training telescope for students at the University of Hawai`i. The visitors and vans are silhouetted against the clouds thousands of feet below us as the sun sinks behind a distant cumulus cloud.

A few minutes later, the clouds turn from orange to a vivid red and it's time to see if there's a hole big enough in the cloud layer for us to do a little work through.

Prospects poor, nice sunset

The first night of our planned instrument engineering/commissioning is not going to go well I feel. The sky was covered with thick cirrus on the drive to the summit and the satellite images are showing even thicker clouds on the way. There is some closed-dome testing we can do but it will be a short night. We're currently trying to acquire a 5th magnitude star which should literally be burning a hole in the detector's array, but we can hardly see it.

The sunset was beautiful although I didn't have much time to take photos this evening.

The week's finally over

This has been a frustrating week at work. A while ago I mentioned I was working on an instrument upgrade project and first light is now due this coming Monday night. Up until lunchtime today progress had been slower than I hoped, but was about what I expected. Modern astronomical instruments are extremely complicated and what makes things even more difficult is that they have to work seamlessly with the observatory's own observing software. The latter task is often the hardest and usually several months are assigned to this. We had much less time than this.

So I felt much relief at lunchtime today when the instrument worked almost flawlessly using our observing software. Now I can feel a little more relaxed this weekend before my stint at the summit next week. The software group did an amazing job in the last day or so and hopefully none of us will be reaching for the blood pressure pills this weekend. There are still some problems to fix but I'm feeling so much more relaxed than I thought I would be yesterday, hence the soothing picture of Mauna Kea from home this evening. I'll be back up there very soon!

Incidentally, have a look at Ant's latest image from the summit. It's amazing. I can't compete with that, but if I get to see something interesting next week, I'll do my best!

PS. I made one or two changes to the blog's layout tonight - a picture at the top and a slideshow. Let me know if they don't look good. I'm artistically challenged so changes like this shouldn't be left to me alone.

Fading heritages

Now that I've just ranted about the UK, I get emailed a link to this site:

Our Fading Heritage

I scored 75%. Not too bad for a foreigner/haole who didn't study for the test and one that can't apply for citizenship for another year or two. At least I could read and understand the questions. I'll do better next time and suspect I'll ace the "fill in the gaps in this sentence written in English test" that's part of applying for citizenship.

There were a couple of questions that caught my eye though. Do people in the US really not know who they fought against in World War II? The Sputnik question was odd because I'm not entirely sure how that links to US heritage, but I guess the Russians getting into space first might smart a little bit.

Old England

I miss the country I grew up in. I had a happy childhood although things became a little difficult in my latter teens and early twenties. Even then I had no intention of living abroad but when I was given a fantastic opportunity in my late twenties to spend a little time in Hawai`i, I had no second thoughts. Who would? It was always going to be a temporary move anyway; experience life on a beautiful island in the middle of the Pacific, learn how astronomy is done at the coalface and then return two or three years later to the UK. Here I am, however, still on an a Pacific island twelve years later.

Why? I don't want to go back.

Although I still love my occasional trips back to the UK (and they are becoming rarer each passing year) I've seen my old country, a beautiful country if you know where to go, become more unpleasant each time I visit. In "The lunatics have taken over the asylum" I had a bit of a rant about the proposed ID scheme which I think is a terrible idea. That's not the main reason I don't want to go back home though - it's because the wonderful culture I grew up in is being lost at a frightening pace.

I often read "The Magistrate's Blog". I'm not entirely certain why, I've never had any interest in being a magistrate or being part of the justice system in any way, but it's a fascinating and very well-written blog that often describes how the dregs of the current UK society are dealt with in law. It was via that blog I came across an article about how the UK has changed for the worse over the years. It is biased, I'm sure, but if I was half as erudite as the author I may well have written something similar:

Theodore Dalrymple - The Quivering Upper Lip

PS. I apologise if someone steps on my foot. It's just the way I was brought up!

Moonlight Sonata

Isn't it strange how music invokes memories? Often they're memories from long ago, but occasionally very recent ones. Listening to Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata this evening reminded me of reading Peter's recent blog entry about Beethoven, Dudley Moore and Victor Borge. Thanks to that I managed to find and reminisce about Victor Borge's legacy.

He was a most talented pianist and comedian. He passed away a few years ago now and I remember being quite upset when I heard the news. My father was a huge fan of Borge and whenever he appeared on the TV we'd watch together - even if it was the old Heineken adverts!

He also performed a memorable Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata...

Moonlit clouds

Sometimes I just sit back in awe at the sights here and tonight was no exception. Looking at the western sky a couple of hours after sunset I was simply gobsmacked by the colours of the clouds.

My first thought was that we still had enough vog in the atmosphere to explain the stunning colours, but both Ant and Andrew are reporting a fire on the eastern slopes of Mauna Kea. I'm not sure the wind is in the right direction to bring the smoke this way, but it might help explain what I'm seeing right now - the NWS are reporting calm winds in Hilo and there's no breeze here. The smoke is quite high in the atmosphere.

I couldn't pick my favourite picture from this evening so posted both. Now I'm going to sit outside on the lanai with a glass of red wine and listen to Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, and I'll play it loud enough to drown out the coquis.

Weird picture of the day

The Kona winds meant I missed the recent triple conjunction of the Moon, Venus and Jupiter, the clouds and vog were just too bad to stand any chance of seeing anything. Fortunately, some people, such as Andrew, managed to take a picture of it at Vacation Resort Hale Pohaku. Nice one!

Sod's law suggests that after an event such as this the evening sky will become clear the day after, and this theory has a lot of support. This evening, the sky was clear. Jeeze. Oh well, time to get on with some late-evening chores, but then I saw the crescent moon setting between the trees in my driveway and poking out between a couple of cloud banks. Quick! Get the camera! Where is it? Damn it!

I rushed upstairs to grab it and then remembered I'd put it in the glove box of my car to take a picture of the vog this morning. Of course, I'd completely forgotten during the morning commute that I'd taken the camera with me, so no vog pictures either.

At what age does senility first start to become apparent?

By the time I'd taken a breath and worked everything out, the moon was about to set behind the clouds and vegetation so I just ran out and took a couple of quick shots. There was no time to figure out which of the 450 thousand available camera settings I should use so just set it to something I thought might work, and the picture above is the result.

What a strange looking image, eh? You can click on it to get a larger version in case you didn't know.

It really is the moon, but with the top part illuminated by sunlight reflected from the Earth (earthshine). The bottom part, directly reflected sunlight, is horribly overexposed. Sorry about that. By the time I would have figured out what setting to use the moon would no longer be in that gap between my driveway trees and the clouds, so this is all you'll get.

What's the bright spot at the top of the picture? It's Venus. Or Jupiter. I can't remember. Now where did I leave my car keys?

A little more from the volcano

Here are a few more shots from my so-called "shopping" trip to the Volcano National Park the other day. The first is of a now solidified lava flow from Mauna Ulu just before it drops down the pali to sea level more than two thousand feet below. There are two types of lava you can see here, pahoehoe which is the smoother, ropey and lighter coloured rock in the foreground (and the stuff my house sits on!) and a`a, the darker more "crinkly" rock a little further away. Pahoehoe is the fast-flowing lava you see in disaster movies while a`a is much slower moving - both are destructive.

As I mentioned previously I was hoping to get a shot of the ocean entry but it just wasn't on. This was my best effort but the vog was simply too thick and the entry point is just too far away right now. These ocean entry points are fascinating to see close up, but can also be lethal. If memory serves a couple were killed at one just a few years ago. The land is unstable and can collapse into the ocean, explosions of lava and scalding water occur and the reaction between sea water and lava produces a rather nasty acidic cloud that's best to avoid.

On the way back up the sunset was impressive but so was the plume from the Halema`uma`u crater at Kilauea's summit. Here it is poking above the local horizon catching the last rays from the setting sun and with Mauna Loa in the background, the world's largest active volcano. The yellow sign is a warning about the endangered Nene goose, a species that's endemic to Hawai`i and nest in the park, although I suspect given the amount of vog these days they've moved to somewhere a little more comfortable, at least temporarily.

Finally, another shot of the Kilauea plume being blown down the pali, a little clearer than in my previous post and accompanied by the last few rays of sunlight for the day.

Local friends

Yesterday evening I was curious as to why the traffic to my humble little blog had suddenly rocketed and realised that it had been picked up by a few excellent local blogs and that they had pointed traffic this way. To return the favour, I've included them in my sidebar.

Firstly, there's the prolific and very informative Damon Tucker's Weblog, I'll be reading this site often as it's a great source of local news. Next, Andrew at A Darker View is part of the astronomical community on the island and like me works on Mauna Kea. There are many interesting articles there and some superb photography! Thirdly, there's Aaron over at The Kona Blog. This is a very well-written blog about local issues and another I'll be reading often.

Finally, there's my good friend and colleague Ant who has just started Adventures in a Lightroom. Look for some great articles and photos there!