So cold it hurts

Well, not down at sea level, but at 14,000-feet and with winds approaching 50-mph the windchill is unbearable. I don't mind the cold normally, but it was a maximum of five minutes spent outside with the camera before coming back into the control room with painful extremities.

Since then, we've opened up the dome for 30-minutes as we had an urgent observation to do, but closed again as the wind became even stronger. Yet another frustrating night in this continuing period of weather from hell for the observatories at the summit.

Still, my friend the lenticular cloud was still there this evening, although judging by the comments people think it's more likely an alien spaceship from outer space, but of course the government doesn't let me comment on that sort of thing in case I might give the game away. Yesterday evening the cloud was still massive although very difficult to see. A grey/white cloud against a grey/white background. I tried the HDR technique again and it brought the cloud out in the picture above but does make everything look a little 3-D!

This evening, though, the cloud is tiny and is hard to see in the picture above - it's at the extreme centre-left. I could have tried to zoom in a little, but I had spent enough time outside and to avoid losing my fingers to frostbite, headed back inside for the night.

High winds

On the drive up to Hale Pohaku this morning I saw a large lenticular cloud over Mauna Loa, but it was still far too dark to take a picture. After an early breakfast and before heading to my room to get a few hours sleep, I took a picture of the cloud over Mauna Loa and one also of a lenticular cloud over Mauna Kea. These types of clouds often form in mountainous areas when there are high winds at summit level.

Tonight we can't open the dome as the winds are still too high. The humidity has been rising as well, so we may be in fog soon although the sky above does appear to be clearing. Another frustrating night on the summit.

Curtailed night shifts

Winter nights observing on the summit of Mauna Kea are real killers. We have a rule that no-one is allowed above the 9000-ft level for more than 14-hours and this is partly safety-related and partly to keep our telescope operators and other observing staff sane. Winter obviously means longer nights and in some circumstances you have to add on a few hours for the time spent preparing for the night. 17 and 18-hour work days are not uncommon. We're human, we need to sleep.

On the other hand, I'm having a hard time recalling the last full night I spent at the summit in recent months. The weather has been so bad that we've given up in the early hours or have been forced down to lower altitudes due to dangerous conditions. Forget that we now have shorter nights, this past winter has seen to it that everyone's been pretty well rested - if you can sleep at Hale Pohaku that is.

I'm heading back up to the mountain tonight to prepare for a couple of nights observing and the forecast is awful yet again. The summary above says it all, but for those unfamiliar with the MKWC's forecast summaries, any blue or red in the top part is bad. They signify the chances of fog and precipitation and in good weather you won't see any colours up there.

So will I take a few more sunset photos? I'm not sure, it may well be foggy up at the summit, but we'll see. It'll also be very windy. That combination means 1) holding a camera steady might be difficult, 2) fog at the summit isn't often photogenic and 3) it'll be bloody freezing.

So much for my new obsession with HDR photography! No matter, I'm still going through old photos and seeing what this HDR technique will do. Here are a couple of examples, before and after. You can decide if the second image is better in either case. As for me, I like the HDR image in the first pair, but am not sure about the second pair. The HDR software also brought out the sea spray spots in that last panorama!


Oh well, back to sleepless nights on the mountain...

Something more difficult than herding cats?

Taking a portrait photo of a cat is something I'm starting to learn is one of the hardest things in photography. I'm trying to cram my brain full of technical stuff: What aperture to use? Should I overexpose? How exactly should I frame this shot? Where's the light coming from? How do you clean seawater off a lense?

You think the cat is posing perfectly and then just as you take the shot she puts her paw in front of her face. Don't ask me what she's doing with her leg but her eyes have spotted something.

Then, just as she removes the paw and you think you can take a decent photo, she dives down because something has taken her interest, and why was my camera almost jerked out of my hands?

Oh, that'll be it. The photo is out of focus because Bubbles has decided to attack the camera strap. Having someone tug on your camera makes it a little difficult to get the framing and focus just right.

The solution, some might say, is to step away and then zoom the camera in from a distance, but this doesn't work because she'll just jump down from the desk and follow me, especially with a camera strap to play with.

Finally, after all the fun, it's the "what, you wanted me to pose?" look. "I would have done this earlier if you told me".

Jeeze. Eddie is even harder to photograph.

La Nina

The e-astronomer is currently observing at UKIRT on the Big Island of Hawai`i. Well, perhaps observing isn't the right word because he's now getting first hand experience of the dreadful last few months every observatory at the summit has been experiencing. Tonight the sky is actually clear, but now the winds are too high to allow UKIRT to open the dome. Similar to most observatories around the world, there is a wind-speed limit above which the dome has to be closed for safety reasons. Talk about frustrating, but there have been many of us in the same position recently. The only good thing about the weather is that if you're at the summit you stand a good chance of seeing a sunset similar to the picture above.

I received an interesting email recently. It contains hearsay so don't take it as The Truth, but a member of the MKWC team recently answered a question posed about why the recent weather has been so bad. The answer, it appears, is that we are currently experiencing La Nina conditions - this is the opposite to the more infamous El Nino.

What was more interesting, at least to me, was that the email summarised what climate modellers have been predicting over the last few months - clearly climate modelling is very difficult. Bear in mind these predictions were not from the MKWC people, just what they've heard:

Aug 08: possible development of a La Nina this winter

Sep 08: still a possibility of a La Nina forming

Oct 08: less possibility of a La Nina forming

Nov 08: models predict a weak La Nina but the climatologists aren't buying the prediction

Dec 08: models becoming insistent that a La Nina will form, meteorologists still don't believe the models

Jan 09: La Nina in full swing. Oops. Models predict La Nina will last into the summer of 09.

Feb 09: models predict a weakening La Nina in Feb to Apr and gone by the summer.

Mar 09: La Nina conditions persisting, models predict an end somewhere between May and July.

Apr 09: La Nina still here, should be gone by the end of June.

It does seem that the weather at the summit became really poor when the La Nina first set in and has remained consistently bad since then. We always get nasty weather at the summit during the winter, but this season has been particularly bad. Unfortunately, it may be with us for another couple of months although it gives me a chance to take yet more sunset photos...

Oops

It turns out I screwed up. I claimed in my last couple of posts that the images there were HDR photos. That's only half true. They are HDR images but there was another step in the processing I missed out. Something called tone mapping. Sorry. I really am learning about these things as I post stuff, so don't be surprised if I've missed something else out as well.

I still like the sky in the half-done photo of Submillimeter Valley, but yesterday's evening sky really should have looked like this:

I'm going back over several pictures that I think I can improve quite dramatically now that I've got a better idea about what I'm doing. I'm glad I'm friends with this guy because things started to click in my brain today after we had a long chat about photography. Incidentally, "Kauai Land, Kauai Water" contains some stunning photos. It was also fun to listen to the stories behind some of the pictures!

Nice sky, shame about the telescopes

Well, here's another attempt at creating an HDR image, and all I can say is that the sky looks absolutely stunning. Shame about the JCMT and CSO looking a little fuzzy, but they won't mind.

This is going to be more of an obsession than with Hugin. I'm not sure I really wanted to do that google search for free HDR software...

Still, I'm impressed with the images that can be taken with a $200 camera and some free software, but am learning, slowly, that a tripod is perhaps the most essential piece of equipment for taking decent landscape pictures.

Good morning and good evening

As I age it's becoming more difficult to deal with shift work. It'd probably be easier if the schedule was regular but it isn't. So, after nights spent at the summit I wake up at 4am after hitting the sack a midnight, and then a few days later I go to bed at 10-pm and still can't get going at 7 o'clock the next morning. It's like jet lag with the additional problem of spending time at 14,000 feet. It has unpredictable effects on your body and mind although I wouldn't give this job up for anything!

This morning was slow and when I finally got my brain working I looked outside and realised it was sunny but the rain was pounding on the roof. Those are the perfect conditions for rainbows so looked to the west and sure enough, there was a particularly bright rainbow over my neighbour's house. Grab camera, go to the upstairs lanai, take a few shots. It's almost automatic these days.

This evening when the sun was setting the clouds looked amazing, so repeat the process. Same spot on the same lanai, just zoomed in a little. I really wish I could paint because this second picture begs a painting.

These pictures were actually my first attempt at creating high dynamic range (HDR) pictures. The technique is to take three or more photos of exactly the same scene but with different exposure times (exposure bracketing). This results in images which have both the bright and dark areas exposed correctly (although not in the same pictures), and then all those images are combined in software to create a picture that you couldn't create taking a single photograph, but does look more like the way your eye see things.

I've been doing exposure bracketing for months now but didn't have the software to process the images properly. Now I'm trying a couple of free programmes to see what they can do. If they work well I have hundreds of pictures with potential - I might end up being quite busy in my spare time!

Moonlit and moody

The other night I was woken by a phone call in the early morning - such is life when 1) you live in a timezone that contains a tiny fraction of the world's population or 2) you work at an astronomical observatory. While taking the call I noticed bright moon light shining through a window right onto the girls' current sleeping quarters, so I couldn't help it, after the call I took a couple of pictures.

Is Bubbles giving me the finger for waking her up?

PS. (Cryptic message of the week): Thank you, TimJ, for making my day today!

Freeze-thaw

It's likely that the heavy snowfalls on Mauna Kea's summit are over until next winter, although I have known it snow in July! There's still plenty of ice and snow at the summit and until the sun moves further north in the sky it will remain in places shielded from direct sunlight. Even in those areas the ice is melting as daytime temperatures rise to well above freezing. At night, however, the temperature drops again and the melting ice refreezes, leading to some odd-looking effects.