We went down to the Kalapana lava viewing point last night. The entry seems to have moved over since the last time we were there in January. But the colours were still pretty spectacular.
Most surprising of all was the amount of surface flow that we saw streaming down the side of the mountain. It really was impressive, more especially for me as I have never seen that much surface flow before. Ever so often you would see a bright light as a tree caught fire and lit up like a candle. Impressive!
I was up at the JCMT last week helping out with ‘Imiloa and SkySkan film crew as they collected footage of the telescope for their 3D productions which they show at the ‘Imiloa planetarium. They are doing all the telescopes on Mauna Kea and this past week was our turn. They have a nice set up. Two Nikon D700 cameras with mounted next to each other at the inter-ocular distance, so that when the images are projected onto the dome with the 3D glasses on, the 3d you get is actually very realistic. They had two of these set ups (i.e. 4 cameras) which they rigged up at various positions around the dome. The cameras would then be set to take up to 7 frames per second for about half an hour or so (you do the math as to how many images that is!). Ben, one of our Telescope Systems Specialists, would set the telescope in motion as the cameras fired away. I can’t wait to see what the final results will be like. Especially in the big dome at the ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center.
While I was there, mostly shepharding and not always successfully trying to stay out of the way, I tried to take a few shots of my own. The image above shows a detail of the support structure on the back of the 15-m JCMT dish.
Some friends and I were taking a trip along the Saddle Road and we stopped off to have a look around at about the 27-mile marker. We came across a pile of old rusted hinges strewn across the relatively new, black lava. Not sure how they got there or how long they were there for, but nature seems to be reclaiming its iron.
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