Mauna Kea - The summit [part 2]

It's now the "morning after" the observing night - I quote this because it's mid-late afternoon as I write this.

The night was not successful from a data gathering point of view, we were frustrated by high cirrus clouds all of the night. We continued to observe whenever there were breaks in the clouds, recording what we could - there is probably some useful information in the data we can use, e.g. to find some temperatures of Jupiter, although these may not be completely accurate results! It is fairly rare for non-clear nights at Mauna Kea, they say it is clear ~90% of the time, so we just have to accept the unfortunate luck.

All-sky camera image from last night, records a 360 degrees view of the sky at the summit. This particular one records in infrared, hence being able to see at night. This indicates how little we could see :-(

The summit of Mauna Kea (MK)

I suppose I should start by saying some of the usual facts about MK, best as a list:

• Height: 4,205m (13,796ft - yes, I got this wrong in my last post..)
• 40% less air available than at sea level...
• ...so much less 'stuff' gets in the way of observing the universe
• Often extremely dry and temperatures float around  0 deg Celsius most of the year
• Measured from the sea floor it is 10,000m tall - 1152m taller than Mount Everest
• It is actually a volcano, last erupting ~4,600years ago and is expected to erupt in the future
• Home to 13 working telescopes, mostly for optical & infrared astronomy
• It includes the largest optical/infrared telescopes in the world (the Keck telescopes), the largest dedicated infrared telescope (UKIRT) and the largest submillimeter telescope in the world (JCMT)
• It is the proposed home to the new Thirty Metre Telescope (10x higher spatial resolution than Hubble)

And many more...

The Drive up...

So last night we headed up to the summit in one of the many 4x4's that NASA own for the Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF), in which I have the pleasure of driving up every night we observe, at just after 10pm at night (Hawai'i time).

 The road itself is about 8 miles long, with the first 5 basically just gravel - very bumpy gravel. Due to the fact the mountain is so shallow compared to most mountains - because the lava was very runny when it came out ages ago, it is possible to drive up the whole way, this means you really do notice the pressure dropping and your ears popping! The route is full of blind turns, narrow roads and steep drops - with the occasional rocks in the road to watch out for, I must say in driving up you have to get used to literally sliding all over the place in some parts...Nonetheless a really exciting drive!

What NOT to do. This was many years ago on the route BEFORE the base camp.

When you get past the 5miles of off-road type roads, you reach a normal road again, and after few miles on this you must then turn off your lights and switch to hazard lights - so your lights don't spoil peoples observations. So you must navigate your way up using the orange flashes of your hazards - bare in mind it is pitch black -absolutely no lights anywhere, unless the Moon is out, in which case safety is definitely increased!

So, here are some pictures from the top taken on my last trip when we went up when it was light once, since when I get up this time it is always dark. By the time we finish observing each night though it is fairly light and we are often treated to spectacular sunrises, the best views I've seen in my life without a doubt!

Sunrise this morning, still cloudy! From left to right, Canada-France telescope; Gemini Observatory; UH 2.2 ; UK Infrared Telescope UKIRT. Sorry about the bad lighting!

Sunset earlier in the year in between the Keck telescopes, on the left is the Subaru 'scope.

Earlier in the year having a cheesy shot of me outside the NASA IRTF

Will talk about the observing itself eventually! Cheers for stopping by.

J