Last night at the summit

After 2 nights of engineering, I'm about to start my last night of observing, together with some new observers, and another operator. They seem awesome, so I'm up for a fun night, I think! Also an exciting one - Since my flight leaves unfortunately early the next day (noon), I'll have to drive down one of the cars, which I'm not allowed to do unless I get some sleep first. So I'll have to leave the summit a bit after midnight. that will be an interesting experience... Driving 4WD UP the other evening was awesome enough (done as exercise for this upcoming experience, and luckily I passed ;)
My camera is broken, and I haven't been able to take it apart yet, so no more photos, I'm afraid...
Anyways, Hawaii, byebye, I wonder when I get a chance to come here again...

Notes from Hale Pohaku

There's of course loads to write, so this is just a very quick report! I finally slept longer than usual this morning (6 hours), which was great, but even though this location (Hale Pohaku, the mid-way facility with lodging and food for the owls (astronomers)) is not as high as the summit of Mauna Kea, it is still high enough to make you lose your breath if not moving slowly. So now, time for a quick dinner, and then going up to the summit and JCMT for another night (12 hours!!!) of observing. This is my 3rd night, and it's been amazingly fun to learn so much at such a short time (and to actually grasp it as well - feels very efficient). A funny thing that I didn't know before, is how projects (to be observed) are scheduled, depending on the weather. First night we actually had too good weather for our galaxies in the start of the evening! And last night, we started up with totally excellent weather (i.e. too good), which deteriorated in a rapid speed and became too bad for our project (!). This is governed by the amount of humidity in the air, and the more there is, the harder it is to get good data. Anyways, since I am starving, I'll just post a few pictures. Could you ever imagine this much snow on Hawai'i?


The lodging at Hale Pohaku. And in the bakground is the slope of Mauna Loa, the huge flat volcano in the south


On our way up to the summit, with the setting sun in the background. Obviously these photos can't really make justice to how it really looks like... :) It's rather grand, to say the least!


Upon leaving the telescope building the morning after the first night of observing... the light was just divine!


The sun is happily trying to keep you awake! And with great success - I had no wish to go to bed anymore when being blinded like this.


Here's a view a little from above, showing JCMT in the middle (the white cylinder - it contains a 15 m antenna)

If anyone wants to see JCMT observing in action, check out this camera (apparently it has won price for most boring webcam in the world - can't see why though. Especially not now when I'm in it...)