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.