Things to know when visiting the Mauna Kea Observatory Telescopes
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ก.พ. 2024
- Visiting the Telescopes on Mauna Kea is well worth doing while on Hawaii's Big Island. Because of the road conditions and the altitude of 13,800 ft, its a bit more involved than a day at the beach. In this video, I show you our drive up to the top of Mauna Kea, what we saw (including the inside of one of the Keck telescopes), and cover all the vehicle requirements and clothing recommendations. Also in the video is a brief discussion how telescopes like these use adaptive optics to un-twinkle the atmosphere and produce images as good as or even better than space telescopes like the Hubble at a fraction of the cost.
Links:
W. M. Keck Observatory www.keckobservatory.org/
Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope www.cfht.hawaii.edu/en/about/
European Southern Observatory www.eso.org
My brother Nick’s Whistler Blackcomb skiing book page www.whistlerguidebook.com/
And thanks to Nick for letting me use some of his photos and video from Mauna Kea! - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Cool, thank you for taking us with you 👍🏼🙂!
Your welcome! Glad you enjoyed the adventure!
Awesome day trip, thanks for the travelog.
It was! Without a doubt the most memorable part of the vacation!
Really enjoyed this video, amazing location. Interesting about the active optics on the telescopes too. I used to be very keen on astronomy but I sold my telescope about ten years ago. I still clearly remember seeing the rings of Saturn with my own eyes for the first time.
Glad you enjoyed it Peter! Isn't it amazing see the rings of Saturn with your own eyes? As a kid I was fascinated by astronomy. I have a small telescope I bought years ago - first thing I pointed it too. What always amazed me is how much astronomers and scientists have managed to figure out from astronomical observations that until recently were just points of light. Seeing the magnificent engineering of the telescopes sure made me envious of the people working on those technologies.
Very cool trip. Great pictures and video. Thanks for all the details and sharing!
Thanks! I did the video because we found it hard to find out what would have been nice to know before going up there - do you really need a 4x4 vehicle, what does one see etc. Hopefully this will be of help to anyone planning a trip to see the telescopes.
@@ElectromagneticVideos Very helpful I am sure. Who would have known the main reason for 4LO is coming down or thinking about adjusting to the air at that altitude. Great to know ahead of time for sure. It is all Fascinating. The end showing the observatory on the mountain while ascending was really cool!
@@ThriftyToolShed Yes! I would not have clued in about the lower air pressure making even harder on the brakes. Funny thing is Its an issue cooling electronics particularity in space - just never would have thought to associate that with brakes. Glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you, Dr. Jones! I have been to the telescopes as well and it is indeed a remarkable experience. We took the “saddle road” between volcanoes on the way from Kona to Hilo and stopped several times along the way on side roads to experience the Martian-like landscape as well. Highly recommended if you go to the island of Hawaii to make this trip if your rental car has 4WD low. We went from 80+ degrees in Kona to 30 degrees on top of the volcano in a couple hours and it was snowing lightly up there. Hard to imagine that the temperature changes that much from paradise to nowhere but it surely does! Appreciate another great video as always.
How neat that you have visited there too! Would certainly be perfect thing to do on a Kona to Hilo drive or vice versa. You had a much more extreme temperature change than we did - I'm envious that you got to experience it actually snowing on Hawaii. Have you been to Haleakala on Maui? Its even more Martian-like and much more beautiful from a photography standpoint?
@@ElectromagneticVideos I have not been to Haleakala yet, but on the next trip for sure. The side roads off the saddle road were amazing - one of the most surreal experiences I have ever had; we were above the clouds on a desolate moonscape. Aside from Grateful Dead concerts, it was psychedelic. LOL Glad you had a great experience there and thank you for sharing. Looking forward to your upcoming videos.
@@MichaelCowden You will be even more amazed at Haleakala - unbelievable place!!!!!!!!!!
Enjoyed the trip with you.
So glad you did! It was fun!
Good stuff! I am not particularly interested in space but those telescopes are a neat sight! A fascinating view of a place not normally known for snow!
Its really a neat day trip experience if your on the Big Island. I was thrilled to hold Hawaiian snow!
Great Video. Besides the Useful it was Beautiful. Thank you
Thanks! It is a beautiful place and also fascinating science and engineering. Glad you enjoyed the video!
I visited Haleakalā (10k feet) on Maui a few years back for a sunrise. Definitely damn cold which was exacerbated by the wind. If I recall correctly, the temperature difference between dark/sunny was huge. They warn you about the cold, but they fail to warn about the wind...so be prepared if you ever do this. Definitely cool watching the sunrise from above the clouds!
I was never lucky enough to see the sunrise from up there - must have been great! Were you able to see stars and the Milky Way before sunrise? I have always thought it must be magnificent from up there.
Interesting point about the darkness and cold. I remember how quickly things cooled during the 2017 eclipse - the sun's radiant energy hitting the ground has a much more immediate effect on warmth that we generally give it credit for.
Wind - I wonder of at dawn the winds on the mountaintops in Hawaii are partly due to the temperature change? Even during the day on Mauna Kea there was a lot of wind - a jacket or windbreaker is certainly a must!
@@ElectromagneticVideos The only thing I could think of before the sunrise was how cold I was. I didn't think to look up! Lol.
It did get warmer rather quickly once the sun was above the clouds. I believe the winds also subsided a bit. However, it was probably 10 years ago and a little fuzzy in my mind.
@@RK-kn1ud Cold really is an overwhelming feeling! Haleakkala must have been magnificent in in reddish light of dawn. Its certainly one of the most beautiful places on earth in the right light.
wow , that was awesome . lots of beautiful physics as well
I couldn't have said it better myself!
Thanks for letting us see such a quirky place!
The highest I've been is Zermatt, Switzerland.
Famous for the Matterhorn mountain that can be seen on the Toblerone chocolate.
I had feelings of altitude sickness there, which was very unpleasant!
I never thought of it as quirky - but it certainly is different! Its interesting that you experienced altitude sickness too. I can imagine how it could be very unpleasant after a longer period of time. I gather you can acclimatize to it by spending a few days at higher and higher altitudes. I find it amazing to think that the constructions workers were able to acclimatize to the point of being able to do significant physical activity at that altitude to build the telescopes.
I use Google translate, although I don't need to, mostly to get the words in the right order, maybe quirky was the wrong word?
I mean a place that suits us tech-savvy geeks…
Yes, you may need to acclimatise, you got up very quickly and didn't give your body a chance to find a balance!
Both our bodies and machines need to adapt to the lower air pressure, maybe you had other equipment with you that doesn't like the height, like a laptop or something?
Everything with fans has a maximum height.@@ElectromagneticVideos
Loved the video!
I noticed your title card reads "Dr. Pete Jones"
What is your doctorate in, if you don't mind me asking?
Glad you liked it! My PhD was on 3 dimensional optics and image processing The R&D group I worked with back then did mostly astronomical image processing and some early work on Adaptive Optics which is why I was so pleased to see Adaptive Optics being used in the Keck and elsewhere - always fascinated me!. I'm and Electrical Engineer / Computer Engineer who does a lot of stuff on physics side of things as well. If you look at some of my other videos you will see things from all those areas of science and engineering!
Thank you for sharing your trip with us! Would love to go there someday....
Your welcome! Hope you manage to get there sometime! If you do, its well worth visiting both the Big Island (where this was) and Maui. The Big Island is more rugged and great if you like exploring. Maui has that too, but also many more beaches that are great for swimming. Wonderful part of the world!
@@ElectromagneticVideos Will keep that in mind, thanks! 👍
Very interesting. Thank you. I was in Hawaii many years ago, but we stayed on Maui. We did go up to Haleakala which goes up to about 10,000 ft. that was quite spectacular. Sadly, no telescope visits.
The keck is an amazing observatory, the adaptive optics is incredible. I knew about the laser, but did not know how it worked until now. I also found the interferometer to be quite incredible. It is definitely something I'd love to visit, but not likely. Take care ⭐🌟⭐
Your welcome! Haleakala is beautiful up top! Keck - yes - amazing - and the interferometer with the two Keck telescopes is something! I purposely kept all of that stuff short - hopefully just enough to give a general audience an appreciation of what is going on. When I was a grad student the lab I was in was very involved in astronomical image processing and early adaptive optics work. It wasn't my topic of research (3-D imaging and processing) but I was always fascinated but it and I learned a lot about it - it was wonderful to see adaptive optics have pretty much become part of modern telescope design nowadays.
Awesome
Thanks!
Nice. Was curious how they corrected the images, Brakes got me thinking about the tires, Apparently there would have been an effective increase of ~7PSI at 14000 feet
Thats and interesting point - never thought about the tire pressure being effectively higher. I guess if a vehicle was spending most of its time up there, the thing to do would be to adjust the tire pressure down by the appropriate amount for more even tire wear and better traction. I wonder if they adjust the tire pressure on the giant equipment used to haul huge telescope parts up there when constructing the facilities.