As an astronomy graduate student at the University of Hawaii, I've enjoyed excellent access to the telescopes atop Mauna Kea. The summit is nearly 14,000 ft high and is one of the premiere astronomy sites in the world. I've made several trips to observe on the telescopes, and this past summer I lived in Hilo, which enabled me to make more spur-of-the-moment trips to photograph unique conditions. Below are a small selection of my images from the past year. A more complete set can be found at www.sgphotos.com/photostories/maunakea.
A ~50-minute exposure showing all the telescopes on the summit. An early Perseid meteor flew through one of the exposures, and the red trail is from me hiking back and forth to the camera. Keck is using their adaptive optics laser. The laser is used to track turbulence in the atmosphere. This turbulence blurs out images (like heat waves coming off the pavement on a hot day), and the telescope mirror deforms hundreds of times per second to exactly cancel out the effects of the turbulence. The result is much sharper images. http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5502/9425138357_98eb942868_b.jpg
The Submillimeter Array (SMA) uses eight dishes to simultaneously observe targets at submillimeter (a bit shorter than microwave) wavelengths. The dishes can be picked up and moved around, enabling the observatory to optimize observations for either resolution or sensitivity. I was observing on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope during during the Leonid meteor shower, and caught one in this image: http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8252/8665034775_e782ecd76b_b.jpg
I noticed that for one night, both Keck telescopes were scheduled to use their adaptive optics lasers. I looked up the team that was using the telescopes, and they are tracking stars as they orbit the black hole in the center of our galaxy. I was flying from CA to HI that day, but I knew I couldn't afford to miss such a rare opportunity. Two lasers pointed into the center of the Milky Way? Oh heck yes. I borrowed a second 5D Mk. II and a Nikon 14-24 so I could have two cameras on it. http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5504/9511919979_674a153ae6_b.jpg
This is just a small selection of my photos from the summit... The rest can be viewed in a gallery on my site. I also was shooting timelapse video on multiple cameras every night (often with motion gear), and I'll release a montage of the footage in the next couple months.
These are indeed spectacular!!! The even number images are my favorites, but frankly I really enjoyed each of these very much. Thanks for posting!
Keith W.
HawaiianOnline wrote:
Wow! These are certainly from a unique viewpoint. Great photos. Are the long exposures true long exposures, or stacks?
Stacks. I typically shoot 30 second - 1 minute exposures for timelapse, and I'll stack up some of the frames to produce the star trail images.
