Imagine our surprise when we discovered that the Saddle Road which takes us to the Observatories passes right through Military Country. I suppose if we had carefully examined the map, we would have seen this, but we weren't I think the kind of hardware we saw en route was a point of interest.
I expected to be pulled over and searched after taking these pictures, but nothing like that happened (it would have been a whole travelogue unto itself!
This is a section of a panorama shot of the summit of Mauna Kea. I composed it from about eight or so pictures and halfway through, I realized that I must have missed a section or two, so as smooth as it might look (this is because I and Photoshop talk well to each other), it might not completely reflect reality. But if you never go, or if you don't care, then it's no big deal to you, right?
We went inside the NASA Infrared Telescope. Check out the PDP-11 that runs the thing. Way cool. One of the things that I really liked about being in here is seeing all the "old tech".
(Well that and the little things, such as this tiny warning pasted over the EXIT). People out in the world are fussing over their latest Pentiums and these guys are probing the secrets of the Universe using stone knives and bearskins.
And here's the back of the NASA scope. You think they would let me look at the front of the mirrors? No way! Let me tell you something about the inside of this building. It is really cold. I watched some tough people shiver in this room.
Here we are back outside the NASA scope. The top of this mountain, nearly at 14,000 feet, is above most of the layers of atmosphere that would otherwise protect us from UV. Additionally, we're in the tropics which means the chance of getting sunburned is even higher. I'm just shocked we're all still able to see. Then again, this might explain why I still occasionally experience a ringing in my eyes...
The Kecks (the twin telescopes in the first picture) use an array of hexagonal mirrors, all aligned with each other and independently. Here's the backs of those mirrors.
Someone had kindly set aside a mirror that wasn't being used so we could see how the independent positioning mechanism looked. Did I take a picture? No, I'm a real shit that way sometimes.
After we drifted aimlessly around the other telescopes for a bit but shortly afterward, we came back down to the 9000 foot level to the Visitors Station. It's a fine place to catch your breath and (if you're feeling frisky) catch a particularly pretty sunset. There are all kinds of nifty displays and gee-gaws you can buy at the Center and, most importantly, this is when you first hear of...
Oddly enough, we encountered those very same Invisible Cows, although not nearly to the tune of the destruction depicted on nearby signs. After we finished our evening of watching distant stars and galaxies, we drove back down, which was considerably easier on our li'l chugger vehicle than driving up. In fact, we found ourselves spending a good amount of this time coasting. Before we had quite realized it, we were travelling at a pretty fair clip. Whoa! Okay, so instead of heating up the engine, we had our choice downhill of heating up the brakes or heating up the transmission. I tell ya, if it ain't one thing, it's another.
We managed to keep it at a pretty slow rate and then we all seemed to get a wild hair and stop the car. Here we are on a wide, flat road in the middle of a plain in the middle of nowhere, with no light anywhere we could see. We figured the view of the stars would be pretty good, even though we weren't on the mountain anymore.
The view was stunning. The sky was so filled with stars that it nearly lit the landscape. I say "nearly", however. The fact was, we had a new moon, which meant there was no other light out there, except for what the Universe supplied. Once the car door closed, it was d-a-r-k. We whispered, it was so dark.
We gazed at the stars enraptured for a few minutes before we heard, very dimly, the lowing of a cow. Ah, we thought. An invisible cow. Let us respond in its native tongue. What fools we were! One of us, possibly Aarron, possibly myself, mooed.
Instantly, we were surrounded by a chorus of startled moos. We were surrounded by cows we couldn't see. Huge dark lumbering cows that were walking curiously through the grass, mooing and munching and probably wondering what the hell that retarded cow just said, but determined to communicate with it anyway -- perhaps by crushing it beneath their invisible bulk. They were everywhere! Freaked us out and if you think it's funny to be freaked out by cows in the dark, you simply weren't there, my friend! We jumped back in the auto and slowly drove away, nearly afraid to turn on the lights for fear of seeing the Unseeable.
Fortunately, we made it back to civilization in one piece. But trust me on this -- the cows are scary.
I took some long-exposure star pictures while we were up at the Visitor's Center. I lay my 35mm camera on a stone wall and held the shutter open (cable release) for up to a minute. On two of the pictures, I have a pretty good shot of satellites moving. One in particular is really cool -- it's a dotted streak, indicating a rotating satellite. I put the negative under a microscope and you can even see regular shapes to the dots, suggesting to my lame-ass brain that these are actual panels on the satellite.
However... I can't get a high enough resolution scan of the negatives to post that particular picture here. Darn it. Any suggestions?
