A windy night on a volcano

This is my second last night.

Luckily we finished our galaxies last morning, because tonight the receiver broke down in a manner we don't know (the error messages weren't very informative). This is a windy night - the gusts are up to 40 knots (45 mph, or 20 m/s). At 50 mph the dome will have to be closed so the fabric protecting the dish won't tear! I can feel the building rocking in the gusts, which makes me think of the totally awesome Australian movie The Dish (about the Parkes telescope and the moon landing)! I hope the wind will a bit more timid tomorrow night, since I would like to use the light of the almost full moon to take some outside photos. I did already, but it wasn't bright enough for my camera. 60 s exposure worked fairly well, but it could be better!

Bizarre observation: below all of the medium sized lava rocks around JCMT, lie hundreds of ladybugs. So I mentioned it to the operator, and he said that during the spring the entire ground had been covered by ladybugs - a phenomenon he had never seen before.

I'm quite ready to be done the observing run for this time. 7 nights in a row is a bit to chew down. It will be a great memory though! My bone marrow has been rather active producing red blood cells as well - I don't feel like 80 years old moving around anymore, and can even jog around!

Edit: Gusts went up to 49 mph... perhaps I'll get down earlier than expected this morning... I just came up to the control room from the kitchen downstairs. The dome was rotating, and since the control room is connected to it, as are the stairs, I had to be careful as to not touch the bottom part of the stairs when jumping up, since that is a scurity feature that will stop the rotation. The entire building is very cool. The first few nights I got rather jumpy when walking around it, with all the unexpected weird noises behind your back in the darkness and coldness.

1 night down, 6 to go...

This is the view from the mountain this morning. See how cloudy it is? We couldn't measure any of our galaxies with that kind of atmospheric humidity... 12 hours work night, and some cereal, and then I was ready to sleep. 

I managed to get 6.5 hours, which is MUCH better than last time I was here! I am very pleased. Despite the cold, I had no height trouble this time either, which was a relief. I felt so well, that I'd walk up the stairs at JCMT in normal speed, and then I'd speechless for 5 minutes, trying to calm down the heart and catch the breath.

Yesterday was also election day - it was kind of interesting to be inside the US to observe that. People at the astronomer's facility were rather normal about it though, although I could sense perhaps even more smiles than usual. The media coverage outside of the US was insane. Which perhaps might be the one indication of accuracy in a certain sentence I heard on the radio on the way down the mountain, in which the current president addressed the US as "the greatest country in the world". I don't aim to be contentious, but I'd like to have at least a few statistics backing up this idea, before I can agree that that is something that should be said and broadcast over the rest of the world. As far as I have seen, the US is pretty far down in most world statistics on characteristics that countries like to have. Indeed, I see Canada much higher up on the list, and the top is usually taken by a Scandinavian country, hemhem... But, thinking of it (which I haven't had too much time to do as yet, I'll admit), I've found two areas in which it can claim greatness: Amount of media coverage and petrol consumption. It also has the largest mountain in the world! Mauna Kea from base to top is actually 10 000 m, even though the part below the surface usually isn't counted. There is no snow on the summit this time, so my photos aren't as amazing as in January, but the views are still breathtaking. 

Back to Hale Pohaku

I'm in one of my favourite places on the earth right now. I just arrived, 1.5 hours ago, after a magnificent drive up the winding Saddle road. Big island of Hawai'i has 12 different climate zones, and you cross a few of those on the way up. Hilo was humid and warm, and up here it is clear, chilly in the shadow, very warm in the sunlight and fairly low pressure (as an airplane). I'm sitting in a comfy chair with my ibook, after a great dinner at the HP, slightly short of breath, a little bit dizzy. Most of which is due to a pretty nasty cold I acquired the evening before I left (I literally could feel it hit me during the time of about 5 minutes. Nasty. So, I hope it will disappear tomorrow before I start my osberving run. It is so wonderful to be here again!!! I look out the windows, see the flat shape of Mauna Loa, the volcano that pretty much covers half the island, and I feel so happy! Even down in Hilo, at the JAC, I can feel that awesome feeling; it's the same feeling as at the Onsala observatory. Life is good.

It's impressive how far out from the mainland Hawai'i lies. I left Winnipeg early in the morning (7 am, in an CRJ200), went to Chicago and pretty much immediately boarded a B777, that brought me to Honolulu. Just for the record, I was only 3 minutes off the winning guess of when we'd reach the midpoint, a little competition United has on the way to HI. The entire flight was 8.5 hours, which is longer than it takes to go to Europe. But, since the flight is domestic, you better bring food or cash, or you'll be hungry... haha! United also have started charging a baggage fee, for every bag that you check, even the first one. From HNL, I flew a 717 with Hawaiian airlines to Hilo. Cool plane, although I was on the wrong side for seeing the Mauna Kea summit (the plane flies on exactly that height, so you see the observatories very distinctly. My ear never really recovered from this flight, and so I've been partially deaf since then, except for a little while on Saddle road, before they popped the other direction.