Off to the Big Island

Sean wrote a proposal to do "imaging polarimetry of star forming regions" with the UH 2.2m telescope. We left this morning for the Big Island to do the project. I'm a little scared, since this is a very werid instrument combo for the telescope. He's downright pessimistic (as usual). He's a bit more jaded than I am, but after another 2 years of this, I think I will be too. Aparently, the instrument is a total hack and might not work at all. Not to mention that it hasn't been calibrated at all, or used by anyone in a very very long time, and no documentation either. Tomorrow night is our first night. It will be interesting. At least I'll get some good pictures out of it, and a look at something most grad students use all the time. Here's some shots of the flight out. There was a ton of haze so I went for B+W - higher contrast that way.... Here's Molokai.

The South-East corner of Oahu.

Zoom in on Hanauma Bay and Koko crater, Oahu.

Koko from the west, looking down towards Makapu'u
We flew over Maui, and here's where I work. The main cluster of buildings is the Maui Space Survailance Center, and I use the big round one. The crater overlook is the big parking lot on the right, where I do most of the timelapse. Cool stuff.....