On Top of the World - A Visit to Mauna Kea

Earlier this year I was one of 18 educators selected for 2023 to be in the NASA/SETI Institute Astronomy Activation Ambassadors program. It focuses on teaching hands-on methods for teaching about multi-wavelength and especially infrared astronomy. Along the way we've had lots of training which included an online course to complete, a bunch of Zoom meetings and lots of emails. All of this culminated in an intense week of curriculum training and a visit to the Mauna Kea Observatories, specifically to get a first-hand look at NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF). 

I'm not going to focus on the curriculum training here (that's for my students to experience), but instead on the visit to Mauna Kea Observatory. I've been to Mauna Kea before (and blogged about it here!), but it was many years ago and this visit offered so much more. I made this return trip with great reverence and a profound appreciation for what this special place means both to the Hawaiian people and the world of astronomy.  

That's me on Mauna Kea with the domes for the Subaru (left) and Keck Telescopes in the background.

After first spending time at the headquarters for the Gemini Observatory and the Institute for Astronomy in Hilo we prepared for our visits to the observatories by spending time at Hale Pohaku, the astronomers quarters, at the 9,300 foot level of Mauna Kea. This allowed us not only to acclimate to the elevation, but to take in its breathtaking night sky. 

The Milky Was so brilliant that you didn't need to be dark adapted at all to see it. Here's a photo of it that I captured with my iPhone:

The summer Milky Way as seen from Hale Pohaku, Mauna Kea

The Milky Way and its spectacular dust clouds were beautiful. It is a shame that because of light pollution most people in the world never get to see it (even fewer see it from such an amazing site as this one!). Of special interest to me are the two stars near the bottom of the image.  The one on the left is Alpha Centauri, the famous Sun-like star that's just 4.3 light years from Earth. To its lower right is Beta Centauri, also known as Hadar, a blue giant star located 90 times further away. Both of these bright stars are too far south to see from my home in Southern California, so catching them was a special treat.

The next day we made a daytime visit to the summit and got our first close look at NASA's IRTF. Fun Fact: the IRTF was built to help support NASA's Voyager missions and made its first infrared observations of Jupiter just before Voyager's first flyby.

Here's the dome of the IRTF:

Behind the IRTF is the Pacific Ocean and the island of Maui. Inside is a 3.0-meter reflecting telescope:

The view above looks up to the telescope's secondary mirror. Most infrared telescopes have an undersized secondary mirror to avoid reflecting any of the heat of the telescope itself to the science instruments. 

When the telescope points at the astronomical object being studied infrared light reflects off of its primary mirror, to the secondary mirror and then down to the Cassegrain focus underneath the main mirror where one of the science instruments collects the light.

Science instruments in the IRTF's Cassegrain focus.

After our daytime visit we returned to the IRTF that night to sit in on some observing. The targets: debris disks around young stars where planetary systems are forming, then studies of the atmospheres of Saturn's moon Titan and Jupiter's volcanic moon Io. These were all studied using spectroscopy, which provides astronomers with a detailed look at the composition of objects.

We got to the telescope before sunset and what a sunset it was.

Mauna Kea sunset with the Keck telescopes.

Here's the open dome of the IRTF during the 'golden hour':

The view was spectacular looking across the mountain, away from the sunset:

From left to right that's the shadows of the IRTF, Keck I & II and the Subaru Telescope domes. Behind the shadows are the domes of the Canada France Hawai'i Telescope, Gemini North, the 2.2-meter University of Hawai'i telescope and the 3.8-meter United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT). Note: the UK no longer operates UKIRT. 

Nature put on its own show after sunset as the Moon, Mars (left of the Moon) and Venus (just above the dome) were out in the western sky:

After it got dark and the scientific observations were underway at the IRTF I captured its dome against the starry backdrop of the summer Milky Way:

Looking the other way, the Keck Observatory was making use of its adaptive optics laser guide star:

While we were there the observing program using the laser guide star at Keck was headed up by Andrea Ghez, who won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for her studies of the stars orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The observing here was a continuation of that research and we could see that the laser was indeed pointed toward the center of the Milky Way:

All-in-all it was an amazing night that culminated in our having some conversations with the astronomers who used IRTF. They needed to be focused on the work at hand while they were observing, so speaking with them afterwards was the way to go so as to not get in the way of their limited telescope time.

The next day we were given a daytime tour of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT). The Observatory is also on Facebook. Find it here.

The JCMT observes at wavelengths that are longer than infrared, but shorter than radio waves in the submillimeter part of the electromagnetic spectrum. As such, it looks a lot like a big radio dish antenna:

The JCMT is one of the telescopes that make up the Event Horizon Telescope that was used to produce the first image of a supermassive black hole (in the galaxy known as M87). It has also been used to detect phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus, which *may* suggest the possibility of bacterial life in its atmosphere (at very best its presence is unexplained).

Daniel Chase, me, project P.I. Dana Backman, Mark Lenfestey, and Vikini Santhanakrishnan underneath the JCMT. Photo by Callie Matulonis.

A big thank you to Callie Matulonis for giving us such a great tour that served as a wonderful capstone to an amazing week of astronomy that has had a huge impact on me personally and will carry over into my teaching in many ways.

Shoot the Stars with your iPhone

I've recently discovered an app called NightCap Pro that allows you to take night sky (and other low light) images with an iPhone.

I haven't had much in the way of clear skies lately, but I have had a chance to try to app out a bit to see what you can do with it, and I must say, that I'm impressed.

The app has several modes that will appeal to those wanting to capture shots of the night sky. The shot above was my first photo with the app. It was taken in Star Mode and shows the constellation Orion. One of the great features of the app is that you can basically set the focus on your phone's camera to infinity, so you don't have to worry if your stars will be pin points or not. I wish that my DSLR had that ability, as getting a good focus at night can be challenging.

Of course, to take any night sky photos (with an iPhone or DSLR) a tripod of some kind is an absolute must. I've got a Joby for my iPhone and it is great. You can attach it to just about anything. For ease of use, I've been gripping mine to my my regular camera tripod, but my backyard fence would also do nicely.

What I especially like about the app is that you can set it to Star Trails Mode to capture long exposure photographs of the night sky. The shot above shows Orion again (with an airplane flying past Betelgeuse).

Here's a longer shot, with numerous airplane trails, pointed at Polaris, the North Star.

And another photo with Polaris at left and the stars of the Big Dipper ascending just right of middle. The Night Cap Pro app also has a mode for photographing satellites and meteors, which I have yet to try out.

Of course you'll always get better night sky pics with a DSLR camera than you will with the teeny tiny aperture that an iPhone has, but that's the point. It is impressive that you can get any star photos at all with an iPhone. That's the great thing about this app, it allows your tiny iPhone camera to do much more than it was designed to do.

I took this shot of star trails (and a meteor) over Halemaʻumaʻu Crater in Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park in the summer of 2014 with a DSLR. Next time I'm there I'll try it with my phone too.

Meanwhile, in Hawai'i...

Check out this great time-lapse video of the observatories on Mauna Kea:

Kilauea - The Fire Within

Check out this amazing time-lapse movie of Hawai'i's Kilauea Volcano. It makes me want to return to the Big Island to see it in person again.

 

Kilauea - The Fire Within from Page Films on Vimeo.

Stars and Palms

Taken last month in Hawai'i.

Are Your Clouds at Night Bright or Dark?

My day job is working for the International Dark-Sky Association, where it is our mission to fight light pollution. I didn't need it, but I had a pretty vivid reminder of what we are fighting for on my recent vacation in Hawai'i.

My wife and I rented a place in the Puna District of the Big Island, right on the ocean, where there is very little artificial light. The first night there I hadn't yet adjusted to the time change and woke up hours before sunrise. When I realized that I wasn't going to be able to get back to sleep, I grabbed my binoculars and stepped in the dark to the beach-facing balcony. There the glittering majesty of the night sky was an awesome thing to behold. Ocean waves crashed below but my attention was on the sky. The stars of late fall and early winter filled the sky, all the way down to the horizon.

Venus rises, with Orion at right

It has been quite some time since I experienced skies so dark. When Venus finally poked up above the distant clouds its light quite noticeably brightened the deck.

In the evening skies the summer Milky Way (above) was brilliant with its bright 'clouds' of stars and dark lanes of dust instantly visible - no dark adaptation was needed.

Occasionally clouds drifted past and I was reminded of a paper published two years ago, Red is the new black, how the color of urban sky glow varies with cloud cover (pdf). The paper points how how in cities with sky glow clouds actually magnify the problem, but in times before the advent of artificial light skies actually got darker when it was cloudy. There are a lot of implications from this (read the paper), but let me illustrate the phenomenon.

Sagittarius and Scorpius with dark clouds in silhouette

Compare the view (above) that I took last month in Hawai'i with dark clouds silhouetted against the star-filled sky, with this shot (below) that I took last night from my home near Tucson, Arizona.

Sagittarius in cloudy, light polluted skies

The difference is shocking. The two photos were taken on moonless nights, just about 1 month apart with the same camera and settings looking at the same part of the sky.

Even though there are relatively strict outdoor lighting ordinances in Tucson/Pima County, the skies here are awash with light pollution and sky glow. Sadly, many communities have little or no controls of outdoor lighting and there skies there are even worse. The clouds in the photo above are white, almost as if illuminated by moonlight. The likely culprit illuminating the clouds with white light is a sports complex to my south. Clouds in other directions had a more orange hue, as in the photo below:

Cygnus in light polluted, party cloudy skies

The photos show that there is much work to be done in controlling light pollution, even in communities where the effort is underway. Learn more about the problem and what you can do about it at darksky.org.

Things From Another World or Day of the Tentacle

Yeah, I couldn't decide which title I liked best. Anyway, here are some wild looking plants I photographed from the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden.

 Nature is freaky, isn't it?

Volcano! (Part 2)

While in Hawai'i we were especially interested in viewing the current volcanic activity. I reported on some of this in my post yesterday. We also took a no doors helicopter ride to see over to see Puʻu ʻŌʻo, the volcanic area that is erupting on Kīlauea's East Rift.

Above: our view as we were approaching Puʻu ʻŌʻo.

Here are two close shots looking into the volcanic cone, which at the time of our visit had two lava ponds within. The lava ponds were hidden, but marked, by twin plumes of volcanic gasses. 

The USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory maintains a suite of solar powered instruments and transmitters that monitor the volcanic activity. You can seen them on the right in the shot above and in greater detail below.

Your tax dollars at work studying an active volcano.

There was also an active lava flow, that at the time of our flyover, was moving to the northeast (red & pink areas in the map below).

A map of Puʻu ʻŌʻō and its lava flows from the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory

Here are a pair of wide angle USGS HVO photos taken the same day as our helicopter flight. The first is looking toward the cone.

USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory photo

The shot below is with the cone behind the photographer:

USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory photo

Even though the volcano wasn't putting on some of the spectacular displays that it has in the past, the helicopter flight was still an amazing experience. The flight was very smooth and, yes, you could feel the heat of the lava below.

The volcanic landscape surrounding the cone is stark, with dramatic cuts through the rainforests on the southeast side of the Big Island.

 Signs of its previous eruptive activity were everywhere.

We eventually headed right over the actively flowing lava. Just about all of it had a thin, somewhat shiny crust of hardening lava that insulates the molten rock within.

We did see some of the lava glow poking through. You can see it in this shot:

Pele's fires of creation are one of Nature's most impressive sights. I am confident that my wife & I will return when the volcano is more active, specifically to see her in action.

Volcano! (Part 1)

My wife and I visited Hawai'i in 2004 and were fortunate enough that we were able to view lava from Puʻu ʻŌʻō, erupting on Kīlauea's East Rift,  flowing into the ocean at night. The experience was one of the most amazing sights in Nature that we'd ever seen.

I didn't have much of a camera then or even a tripod with me, but I did manage to record a few decent photos of the site. Here's one of them:

As we were planning our 2014 trip I knew that I needed to bring my DSLR and a decent tripod to be able to record any nighttime lava action.

Of course Pele does what she wants and there was no lava flowing into the ocean during our recent visit. Lava is still erupting from Puʻu ʻŌʻō, but was not easily accessible during our visit. We later paid a visit to Puʻu ʻŌʻō but that will be in Volcano! Part 2.

Fortunately, there is Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park.  Within the park is the Kīlauea caldera and within that is Halemaʻumaʻu crater. There's a lava lake in Halemaʻumaʻu and, while the lava isn't directly visible, after dark the glow of the lava illuminates the volcanic gasses. It makes for a wonderful show.

 Even in the daytime the crater is an impressive sight. 

We headed up twice (July 26 & 28) to see Halemaʻumaʻu--both times just before sunset. I did some time-lapse photography. I adjusted the position of the camera a bit now and then, but the results aren't too bad. 

Here are some stills that I shot from the second evening.

There were low clouds streaming just over the crater, adding to the effect of the volcanic glow. 

As darkness fell, I was starting to get pretty worried that we wouldn't end up with clear skies at all.

Look closely and you'll see that there are stars in the photo above. Two in particular were of special interest to me. Look on the right just above the darker clouds. That's Alpha Centauri (the leftmost of the two) and Beta Centauri (to the right). Alpha Centauri is, of course, famous for being the brightest member of the system of stars that is closest to our own solar system. It is too far south to be seen from Arizona, so catching it was a thrill.

As the sky grew darker the low clouds cleared away leaving a magnificent star-filled dark sky, free of all artificial light.

Only the glow of Halema'uma'u itself competed with the stars. Well....the annoying people trying flash photography of the crater were causing their own periodic light pollution too but I digress.

One way to catch the volcanic action without making the trip to Hawai'i is to look at the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory's website. They have a live webcam pointed looking down at the lava lake. Here's a shot I grabbed from last Saturday:

It looks like the recent hurricane has kept the webcam from updating right now but it provides dramatic look into the crater showing the darker crusted over lava sheets floating on the bright molten lava lake. 

While we were in Hawai'i we had another volcano adventure which will be the subject of my next blog post.