The end of the road is nigh

Perhaps I should have titled this "We're on the Road to Nowhere". I've seen this sign countless times over the years I've visited and then lived here, but have never stopped to take a picture. Almost invariably, it makes any visitor I take down this way giggle.

Never turn your back on the ocean

The phrase "never turn your back on the ocean" is well known in Hawai`i. The ocean is often calm, wonderfully warm, offers great swimming, snorkeling and diving opportunities but can also be deadly, especially to the inexperienced. Large surf and strong rip currents have killed several people in the past. Today I saw a close call.

I had the day off after working the weekend on Mauna Kea and in the late-afternoon visited one of my favourite places on the island, the Puna coast just north of Kalapana. The surf was high; there is a current high surf advisory for the east shore and in fact the last forecast I saw called for increasing surf later this week. That should be fun to watch! Anyway, I watched the surfers at Isaac Hale Beach Park and tried to take a picture or two but wasn't too successful, there was so much ocean spray reflecting the sun that the pictures didn't turn out very well. So I drove back to the south, towards Kalapana to see if I could take a couple of good pictures of the coast.

Well, I found a nice spot and took a couple of pictures of a family fishing on the rocks, but noticed that the images looked nasty when I reviewed them on the camera's LCD. My lense had sea spray on it, so was about to clean it when I noticed the father, who was doing the fishing, waving at his wife and child to get back. The following shots capture the event and apologies for the poor quality photographs. As ever, if you click on the images you'll get larger versions which might help you see what happens on the rocks!

Father setting up his fishing tackle with family watching. Nothing looks too untoward here except this is when I noticed the rubbish on my lense. I was about to clean it but saw that a large set of waves was heading this way. Uh-oh! I'm a long way from the family so even if I shouted a warning, they wouldn't hear me above all the noise from the surf.

Oops! That wave was a little high. In order to try and counter the effects of the dirty lense, I zoomed in a little. I hoped that would put the stuff on the lense so far out of focus it wouldn't have an effect. It did seem to help in the next shots although now I had no time to make sure all the settings were correct. So let's just see what happens.

The next wave was big and the father had seen it. He immediately went back to his child to keep him away from the cliff's edge. This guy never turned his back to the ocean and a good thing too because the shit was about to hit the fan.

Not the next wave, but the one after. In those few seconds the family had decided that they were not in a good situation and ran quite quickly away from the cliffs. I'm so glad they did, as this wave was a monster.

Can you see the spot where the father was originally going to fish from?

Forget that spot - his family, who were now much further back from the water, would have been in trouble if they hadn't retreated so quickly.

The family were fine if a little wet. I drove back that way right after the waves and they were all together. I'm more than relieved that the father was alert and didn't forget the first rule. Never turn your back. Unless you're running away of course...

Sleepy astronomer witnesses UFO weapon test

Finally! After years of observing the night sky and not seeing one alien space ship, I get to see the government test out one of their UFO alien spaceship laser-blasters on a tree near the Visitor Center on Mauna Kea.

They thought they could get away with this by testing the alien atomiser in the middle of the night when all the astronomers were either on the summit or asleep, but they didn't figure with me. I caught this test while trying to take a picture of the Milky Way above Mauna Loa, but now I know the government's secret. It's also obvious that everyone who works at the Visitor Center is either a government official keeping secrets - or they're aliens.

Actually, it's part of the panorama I tried to take at around 1:30am on Thurs night. Someone in a pick-up drove up to the Visitor Center just as I was trying to take a 60-sec long exposure. The laser-like lights come from the vehicle's headlights facing me for a few seconds and then doing a U-turn. What they were doing up at 9000 feet in the first place in the early hours is beyond me...

Mauna Kea's parking lot

Please excuse the noise in this photo, it was taken after the sun had set and it was a longish exposure.

The summit of Mauna Kea is one very crowded place in the evening. Although the number of astronomical observatories at the summit of Mauna Kea has remained steady due to agreements reached in the past, the number of astronomers visiting the summit has declined quite noticeably in recent years. I suspect this is due to a number of factors, for instance some observatories offer remote observing, i.e., the astronomer is at sea-level or at least amongst civilisation elsewhere and controls observing via the internet (and ultimately, the phone). Other factors include the financial situation we're all aware of and instead of visiting the summit with a student and postdoc, a professor often now just sends a student and relies on the observatory staff to do the training and ensure that the data the inexperienced student collects are good.

That puts quite a load on the observatory staff although on the whole we're happy to do that, although sometimes I've had to bury my head in my hands when even simple astronomical concepts aren't understood. Airmass and seeing are good examples.

In the meantime, I can't help noticing that the number of tourists visiting the summit is increasing despite the downturn in the economy. This is probably a bad thing for the summit's environment, but a good thing for the local economy. In fact, I'm surprised by the number of tourists I see at the summit these days because tourism in Hawai`i is declining at a frightening rate. I'm not sure how to understand these conflicting observations.

Just as a final note, the tourist vans you see in the picture above are only about half of the tourist traffic on a typical evening. The others are on the the summit ridge. You can't see most of the vans in the picture below, they found a good hiding place!

A window on the weather

The snow drifts on the mountain were several feet high in places. The sun has started to melt these over the last couple of days but in the shaded areas, such as this, the snow has turned to ice and won't be melting anytime soon. This drift is about three feet high and is now solid ice.

Hoth

Nothing much to say in this post, just a bunch of pictures from the summit featuring ice. It's been a particularly wintry season on the mountain although hopefully the last storm has passed and spring will start to take over.

Stormy summit clouds

The weather has been poor the last few days at the summit with a lot of snowfall. Tonight it finally cleared although the remnants of the storm are still at the summit. This evening, for instance, the clouds were at summit level and looked angry, but the colours were amazing as the sun set behind them. We were hopeful of a good night, because the clouds generally start to descend once the sun has set, and they did indeed try to. Unfortunately, as I write this (midnight), the clouds are back and the summit is in thick fog. The forecast is encouraging for tomorrow night though. It'll be good to get back into the swing of things, it's been quite a while since I last did some observing.

So, the pictures are 1) the true summit. The snow is almost pristine but I see some people have trekked to the summit already.

2) The twin Kecks with angry looking clouds behind them. I believe it takes something like 15-minutes to fully open a Keck dome (please correct me if I'm wrong), so no chance of opening now with the threat of optics-damaging fog all around.

3) Finally, the JCMT sits down in Submillimetre Valley with fog blowing through and the colourful but threatening clouds not far away.

Sunrise from HP

It looks a little like the surface of the moon, doesn't it? A really powerful zoom lense catching the moon as it sets behind a nearby cinder cone. Actually it's the snowy summit of Mauna Loa at sunrise photographed while I was standing just outside the HP dining room at breakfast. Not a bad view while eating your bacon and eggs...

Mauna Loa is to the south, and of course the sun is rising to the east, but it isn't quite high enough to rise above the terrain - the shadows in the sky are quite spectacular though.

Night sky from HP

Looking south from Vacation Resort Hale Pohaku on the slopes of Mauna Kea at around 1:30am. The sky wasn't that great but the Milky Way and some of its dark lanes are visible. Mauna Loa is silhouetted in the far distance with a much closer cinder cone just to the right. Below these is the Visitor Center which looks a little brighter than it really is!

The summit is covered in snow again although the roads have been cleared, at least they were until it started to snow again late this afternoon.

Has it got a drawbridge and a moat?

An Englishman's home is his castle. Except this is near Kalapana on the Puna coast in Hawai`i. I'm sure there are wonderful views of the ocean from the battlements.

Caption contest?