top of the world
i'm back where it all started, the Big Island - Hawaii.
Avishay and i have two observing nights with Keck, the largest (optical) telescope on earth.
We have a busy night ahead of us, including observations of many objects and there's hardly any room for errors, as any minute of observing time is important.
flying over the pacific ocean, we saw a thick blanket of clouds under us and started to get worried... but as we approached Hawaii, we saw that the clouds are actually under the mountain. 
if you look at the summit, you can see a few white domes. the most right one is Subaru, a Japanese telescope with a silvery dome that reflects the sun like a mirror... (btw, "subaru" is the "Pleiades" constellation). left to it are two twin ball-shaped domes, these are Keck1 (which i'll be using) and Keck2. more to the left are some other smaller domes.
[i had to set the shutter time as short as possible, because the plane was shaky..]
here's a closeup from 2 years ago... (the one in the center isn't mine. i probably grabbed it from the internet :) but that's probably how it looked, if you were above the mountain looking at our plane...)
3 comments:
I'm jealous! How was the weather tonight? Looking at anything interesting?
it started great, with 0.7'' seeing, and at the middle of the night we had to close the dome because it became foggy and 90% humidity at the summit. we are still at the observing room though (it's 3:37 am here) hoping that the weather will clear.
it doesn't look so good. :(
we did manage to get some good data at the beginning of the night, and we could use these data to measure distances to several galaxies in which a supernova occurred. it was fun while it lasted. maybe tomorrow will be better... everybody keep your fingers crossed!
Ok. Fingers crossed. I'll sacrifice a PBJ to Pele tonight. No god could turn one of those down.
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