An Evening on Mauna Kea

Larry had a 'bucket list' visit to Pearl Harbour and the USS Arizona; Monica's bucket list visit for this trip was to see the telescopes and the sunset at the top of Mauna Kea. This is considered THE best viewpoint on the planet for astronomy, above 40% of the atmosphere, which is why there are 13 telescopes at the summit.  Most of them are optical, looking in the visible light range, some are sub-optical (millimeter wavelengths) and some search at the radio frequency level.

The excursion included a pre-climb picnic dinner, parka jackets because it can be quite a bit cooler at 14,000 feet up, and a stop afterward for stargazing. The drive itself to and from our resort on the coast was about 1 1/2 hour. We have realized already that there aren't very many straight lines on any Hawaiian island because more often than not you have to drive around a volcano. And here on Hawaii there are four large ones - Kilauea in the south, Hualalai in the north, and Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea in the middle. Mauna Kea is slightly higher, but Mauna Loa is a lot bigger in circumference, so by total mass it is by far the largest, and also takes the longest to drive around. Here are a few photos from the climb.

This is a cinder cone on the side of Mauna Loa. Lava sometimes
spurts out of cracks on the slopes of the volcanoes, and as it lands
it piles up around the vent and creates a cone.

Just about to drive into the clouds

Our picnic dinner stop was at an abandoned sheep station at just above 7,000 feet. We were a group of 14 in a modern 4 wheel drive tour-style bus and between us and another Globus member group, Cosmos, we had one bus to ourselves. The dinner, in all our cases chicken teriyaki, was served picnic style in a large tent, and was actually quite good. They even had tablecloths! Here are a few pictures of the sheep station - much more interesting!

As we moved higher toward the summit, our driver/guide, Nate, turned off the road and took us to see the VLBA or Very Long Baseline Array radio telescope. This is part of a multinational radio telescope project that circles the globe from Hawaii to St. Croix and is synchronized to work as a single telescope collecting radio wave signals from space.

Enlarge this photo to read the description
of the VLBA and what it does

The terrain is pretty rocky up there. All basalt from the
lava. And the sun is just around the side of that hill.

We were about to get back on the bus when we turned
around and saw this - who knew the end of the
rainbow is right beside a telescope, and us
close enough to walk up and touch it?

Then, at last, we reached the summit of Manua Kea at 13,796 feet. All we could say was 'Wow!!' Amazing to be that high above the clouds and not in an airplane. The air was so crisp and clear and thin that we had to be a little careful walking around that we didn't have trouble breathing. We had been up at that elevation before, in Peru, but even if you know what to expect, it can take some getting used to.

Rather than waste any more time searching for words, we'll just put in a few photos from up there.

Welcome to Telescope Row - or was that Rowe? Monica
with the Subaru and Keck I and Keck II telescopes
behind her.

The US Keck telescopes. These were used to find the first black holes
and supernovae.

The Kecks and NASA Infrared Telescope

Behind us is the Canada-France-Hawaii Optical Telescope

The UK Infrared Telescope and the University of Hawaii .6 Meter
in the distance

After sunset we headed back down to the area of the Visitors' Centre just above 9,000 feet to do some stargazing. Of course it was impossible to try to get any photographs without a tripod, so we'll just say that we were all awed by the number of stars and the Milky Way. For all the times we had been in the southern hemisphere, where the Milky Way is more visible, we had always been 'clouded out' and hadn't been able to see it. Standing out there and just looking up was an 'OMG!' moment in the truest sense.

Nate set up the portable 11" telescope and started pointing out things - the Milky Way, some of the astrological constellations like Libra, Scorpio, and Sagittarius, and individual super giant stars like Antares, that you can see glowing reddish with the naked eye. Then we moved on to some star clusters, the Andromeda Galaxy, that looked like a fuzzy oblong spot, and the crowning event - Saturn! What made Saturn so awesome was that it is currently tilted so that from Earth we are actually viewing the planet from the top, so we could clearly see the whole ring structure around it. Even Norm, with his terrible eyesight, could make it out through the telescope.

After an hour or so, we made a last quick stop at the Visitors' Centre, where Monica bought a hoodie that says 'Mauna Kea Observatories  Clearly the Best' as her souvenir, and then started the long drive home. Most of the way down if we looked out the window we could still clearly see the Milky Way, as if it was giving us as much of a view as possible to make up for the times we couldn't see it.

Yes, it was a long afternoon and a long bus ride, but was it worth it? Absolutely! Would some of us do it again? Most definitely.

When we talked to other people in our group the next day, they said they had had some more very heavy rain in Kailua-Kona in the mid- afternoon, enough to flood streets and stall cars. Barb and Monica had been getting heavy rain/flash flood warnings on their phones off and on for a day or so - something that the cell providers set up automatically with the Hawaii weather service - and it seems that we missed one while we were up on Mauna Kea.

But now we had to get back to more mundane things. We needed to be packed up for a 6:15 bags-out call in the morning for our flight to Maui.