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Hawaii Public Radio is holding their bi-annual fund drive this week, and one of the bonus offers available for becoming a member or renewing is a trip up Mauna Kea with Hawaii Forest and Trail:
Tour Date and Time: Sunday, July 8, 2018, approximately 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.; pickup/drop-off locations on Hawaii Island TBA
From Hawaii Forest & Trail, this daylong charter tour will bring you from sea level to the high alpine to witness the dramatic diversity of Hawaii Island's geography. The sacred home of traditional Hawaiian deities, Maunakea now also hosts the greatest astronomical complex on earth. Your knowledgeable guide will help uncover the connections between Hawaii's ancient practice of navigation and the modern pursuit to understand our universe through technology.
Here are all the details:
http://hawaiipublicradio.org/post/scienc...ure-july-8
Join Hawaii Public Radio or renew your membership, and discover yourself on Mauna Kea this summer.
Idiots rule the world, but only when there is a fair vote. - Last Aphorisms
"I'm at that stage in life where I stay out of discussions. Even if you say 1+1=5, you're right - have fun." - Keanu Reeves
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Here are a couple of recent videos I thought some here might enjoy - one is about our "sister" telescope, the JCMT, the other a tour of the MK summit in fairly unfriendly conditions. I call the JCMT our sister not because it observes at the same wavelengths as UKIRT, but the staff of both the JCMT and UKIRT have worked together for roughly 30 years.
https://youtu.be/P_HMhiarW2E
https://youtu.be/NSqdbsRYrWc
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A type of camera that can be used to detect the faint reflected light of exoplanets has been built, the largest of it's kind, for use with the Hale telescope at Mt Palomar. Researchers hope one day that an even larger version can be used with the TMT on Mauna Kea. With a telescope as large as the TMT, it may be possible to detect signs of life in the atmospheres of planets in habitual zones.
Won't that be something?
https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/t...-darkness/
“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I'm at that stage in life where I stay out of discussions. Even if you say 1+1=5, you're right - have fun." - Keanu Reeves
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Thanks, HOTPE. There's a recent study that shows how the new extremely large telescopes being built (or about to be built) are in a unique position to study exoplanets in the thermal infrared. The TMT on Mauna Kea will be on the best site of all of them for this but loses that advantage if it gets built in La Palma.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.03218
"
The next generation ground-based extremely large telescopes (ELTs) present incredible opportunities to discover and characterize diverse planetary systems, even potentially habitable worlds. Adaptive-optics assisted thermal-IR (3-14 micron) imaging is a powerful tool to study exoplanets with extant 6-12 meter telescopes. ELTs have the spatial resolution and sensitivity that offer an unparalleled expansion of the available discovery space. AO-assisted thermal-IR instruments on ELTs will be superior to JWST for high contrast imaging in the thermal-IR, and complementary to high contrast observations at shorter wavelengths, in space or with second-generation extreme AO instruments. With appropriate investments in instrumentation and pre-cursor observations, thermal-IR equipped ELTs could image the first terrestrial and super-earth planets around nearby stars, opening the door to characterization of potentially habitable planets from the ground and space."
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Not a Mauna Kea telescope, but the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) was successfully launched today. TESS is the next generation of planet hunters that aims to discover thousands of new exoplanets orbiting stars in our Galaxy. Many in Hawaii are connected with the project and the observatories on Mauna Kea will be used to follow up TESS observations. In addition, the sensors TESS will use were built in Hawaii.
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/TESS_IfA/
"
TESS will be a game-changer for our understanding of planets and the stars that they orbit." said Daniel Huber, astronomer at Institute for Astronomy (IfA) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and lead of two TESS programs funded by NASA. "The sheer number of stars for which TESS will provide data - 10 to 100 times more than Kepler - is bound to yield some very exciting surprises."
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Hey Tom, I heard recently Uranus smells bad. Like rotten eggs.
Has anyone else heard of that fact?
ww.kiiitv.com/article/news/nation-world/clouds-above-uranus-smell-like-farts-and-rotten-eggs-oxford-researchers-declare/507-545246099
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That’s not very nice. Tom already has a black eye...
https://goo.gl/images/JuXxNz
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As an interlude from the current eruption stuff...
I don't think this show will have anything directly from Mauna Kea but know it discusses the TRAPPIST-1 system that UKIRT on MK has been observing for a couple of years now. Anyway, it's the latest Nova episode entitled "Are We Alone?" broadcasting at 9 pm tonight on PBS Hawaii. Getting back to lava and rocks, another Nove episode which will be shown immediately afterward at 10 pm - "Life's Rocky Start".
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wonders/#are-we-alone
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/life-...start.html
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Just wanted to say to those that enjoy this thread that I haven't abandoned it, but given what's going on in Lower Puna I thought it inappropriate to continue posting updates, it didn't seem the right thing to do. Once things settle down and people are still interested, I'll resume posting here. Obviously, I don't know when that will be.
