A Starry Starry Night

Hubby is a very hard guy to buy a gift for but the gurls outdid themselves! For his birthday, knowing we were going to make this trip to Hawaii, they bought him a tour to the Mauna Kea Observatory. Lucky me, it was a ticket for two!! 

We meet our tour group at three o'clock in 83 degree heat. The tour guide was a geologist and while driving up the mountain he talked nonstop about the island. Great information! Until the drive up we didn't know that there are two types of lava rock:  

  "...pahoehoe (pa-hoy-hoy) and a'a (ah ah). Pahoehoe lava comes out smooth and dense and can form large areas that resemble flat parking lots or smooth bumps. A'a, on the other hand, forms individual rocks anywhere from a few inches to many feet in size. The rocks are porous and very jagged. In general, pahoehoe is very easy to walk on and a'a is very difficult, if not nearly impossible, to walk on (at least without getting hurt)."

Or this tidbit:

"Mauna Kea is the highest mountain in the world and I stood on the very top of it! (Mount Everest is the tallest BUT Manua Kea is the highest - don't forget all the elevation under the ocean!) Mauna Kea ("White Mountain") is a dormant volcano on the island. The highest point in the Pacific Basin, and the highest island-mountain in the world, it rises 32,000 ft from the ocean floor to an altitude of 13,796 ft above sea level, which places its summit above 40 percent of the Earth's atmosphere." 

Once an airplane reaches the altitude of 10,000 feet it becomes pressurized. So we were high up and the ail was thin!

Above the clouds

Enjoying the view over 10,000 ft above sea level

The University of Hawaii leases the land that the 13 observatories are on. They do not benefit from the buildings being on the land but by the scientists using the observatories. Scientists must apply to use the observatories years in advance and when are accepted, they will be spending many thousands of dollars for the privilege.There cannot be more than 13 on the land so they are going to tear one down and build another bigger and better one in the coming years.

At over 13,000 feet above sea level once we arrived at the summit we quickly put on winter coats and began setting up cameras for the sunset and moon rise:

Full moon over the shadow on Mauna Kea

Sunset

The wind was blowing and once the sun went down the temperature, with windchill, was about 0 degrees but it was absolutely beautiful!

We all got back in the vans, went down to about 9,000 feet and did some star gazing with high powered telescopes. We looked carefully at Jupiter and its four Galilean moons including Europa, Orian's belt as well as other stars. Another wonderful day in Paradise!