Posts Tagged mauna kea
Time-lapse movies of UKIRT and Mauna Kea
Darren Baskill just finished an observing run at UKIRT, and during his run did some time-lapse photography of UKIRT and Mauna Kea. He has a bunch of movies and photos up on this flickr set, but these two are my favourites:
In this one UKIRT is illuminated first by the setting sun, and then by the moon through the night. You can see stars and clouds drift across the sky, and UKIRT switching from target to target. This looked like a productive night, if a bit cloudy.
The second video shows the control room during the night. Thor Wold is one of our telescope operators whose job is to keep things running smoothly. All the monitors mean there’s a lot of information to keep track of during the night!
Thirty Meter Telescope coming to Mauna Kea
News from the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy:
After careful evaluation and comparison between two outstanding candidate sites, Mauna Kea in Hawai’i and Cerro Armazones in Chile, the
board of directors of the TMT Observatory Corporation has selected Mauna Kea as the preferred site for the Thirty Meter Telescope!
You can read more at the TMT press release.
Weekly Science Video: Methane (and life?) on Mars
Posted by Brad in Astronomy, Friday Science Video, Weekly Science Video on 16 January 2009
NASA recently announced the discovery of seasonal plumes of methane on Mars. I’ll let Michael Mumma do some of the explaining:
And now for a few details.
We know the methane was produced recently because methane, made up of one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms, breaks up easily when struck by ultraviolet light from the Sun. Because it breaks up quickly, if we’re to detect it it must be being replenished somehow.
The hypothesis that the methane is created by subterranean volcanos is on the unlikely side. Mars shows no evidence of recent volcanic activity, and we should be able to detect other gases produced by volcanos such as sulfur dioxide.
Methanogens are bacteria whose waste products include methane. They have been found in many extreme locations on earth, including three kilometers under the ice shield in Greenland and in desert soil samples near the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah.
This discovery was made through years of observations using the Keck Observatory and NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility, both located on Mauna Kea.
Weekly Science Video: Avalanche on Mauna Kea
Posted by Brad in Friday Science Video, Weekly Science Video on 09 January 2009
I’m going to get back into the Weekly Science Video habit this year. The first one of the year comes courtesy Andrew Cooper
Avalanche from Andrew Cooper on Vimeo.
When it snows on Mauna Kea, one of the most important jobs to be done is clearing the telescope domes of snow. At JCMT and UKIRT, a snow-removal crew has to get on the roof (of JCMT) or dome (of UKIRT) and shovel the snow off by hand. At Keck, they turn the dome shutter into a giant snowplow, and Andrew captured the result.
Andrew has a good post on snow-clearing at Keck, which is where the video’s from.
White Christmas in Hawaii
If you thought about a white Christmas, Hawaii would probably be the furthest from your mind. Bring it closer, because Hawaii has a white Christmas this year!
It’s a bit foggy at the summit of Mauna Kea but there is currently snow up there, as you can see in this picture from one of the webcams at Subaru:
Snow on Mauna Kea, as captured by the Subaru Telescope webcam.
The National Weather Service currently has a Winter Weather Advisory in place for Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, stating “expect rime icing of less than one quarter inch…along with snow accumulatino of one half inch or less.”
Merry Christmas to all my readers!
Hazards of Mauna Kea: Getting There
In the last couple of months I took two sets of friends up to the summit of Mauna Kea. I’m always sure to explain all of the hazards that come with being at 14,000 feet, but given I was the one driving I probably didn’t fully explain the hazards of getting to and from 14,000 feet.
Last night Tom was coming down Mauna Kea and came across an overturned truck. Like he says, it’s a good thing this crash didn’t happen about a mile further down the road, as that’s where when you go off the side you keep going and going and going…
Vog in Hawaii
Posted by Brad in Environment, Hawaii on 08 December 2008
Probably unique to Hawaii, at least unique within the United States, is vog. Similar to smog, vog is formed by a combination of sulphur dioxide from Kilauea, oxygen, and water vapour. With the increase in gas output vog has made its presence felt more often recently. Living in Volcano, we notice vog all the time. Most of the time it affects communities such as Glenwood or Mountain View more than us, as the vog blows either over us or to the north of us, then descends onto these communities. Driving through it is like driving through a thick fog, but you get the bonus of sulphuric gas to make your throat hurt.
A good demonstration of how vog affects Hawaii comes from the MODIS instrument on two satellites in orbit around the earth. Their December 7, 2008 image of the day shows the bulk of Hawaii covered by clouds and vog. Clouds are obvious. Vog is the thick haze spreading to the north-west from the southern-most Big Island.
Clicking through to the high-res image shows two sources of heat on the Big Island, denoted by red boxes. The southern-most heat source is the Kilauea ocean entry near Kalapana. The northern heat source is a brushfire — you can even see the smoke plume drifting off to the west.
You can also clearly see evidence for the tropical inversion layer that makes Mauna Kea an excellent site for astronomy. The inversion layer keeps clouds and moisture below roughly 10,000 feet, and the summits of Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa, and Haleakala on Maui are well above this elevation. You can clearly see all three poking above the clouds.
[Thanks to Andrew for the original link to the MODIS page]
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