Hawaii:  Life Gets a Little Warmer

As many of you know I was able to convince work  to send me to the High Energy Division Conference of the American Astronomical  Division in November 2000.   It was a very productive 3 days at the conference  for me.  Even better however was the 8 days that left me to get aquainted  with two of the Hawaii Islands. I hope you enjoy some of these pictures,  I think the best pictures are at the end.

I flew over early, met a friend and colleague (Dan Harris), and took a shuttle flight from Honululu to Hawaii.  We arrived in Hilo at the end of a record breaking 36 inches in 24 hours of rain.  We were glad we rented a 4 wheel drive Jeep.

Here's a picture of the flooding in Hilo.



Look at all the trash that was washed up.


Ignoring rental car rules we drove to Mauna Kea.  At over 14,000 ft it's  considered to be the best spot on the Earth for optical/infrared astronomy.   Unofrtunately it was very cloudy when we were there.  We did however pull  astronomy rank and get personal tours of some of the telescopes (Keck, Gemini,  UKIRT/SCUBA, &the CFHT).  Very cool, unfortunatly none of these pictures  really came out that well.


Here's Dan in front of UKIRT.



This is one of the two 10 meter segmented Keck mirrors, impressive.



Next--->