4 metre solar telescope - I want one!!!

[Merlin66 (Ken)]

https://www.nso.edu/press-release/in...e-first-light/

[multiweb (Marc)]

Those images and videos are mesmerizing.

[glend (Glen)]

Surely they could find some use for 13kw of energy generated by that mirror, like using it to generate electricity.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Wow awesome

Mike

[multiweb (Marc)]

Got that pic on FB

[gary]

I can see the DKIST dome from my window.

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by gary

I can see the DKIST dome from my window.

Are you holidaying in Maui?

[gary]

Originally Posted by multiweb

Are you holidaying in Maui?

Hi Marc,

Been observing from Mauna Kea on the Big Island for the past two weeks.

From the house I can see across the water to Maui and can see all the domes on the top. Can discern individual domes through stabilized binos.

Can also see the scopes on Mauna Kea when I look the other way.

Having dinner with the head mirror technician from the Keck Observatory as I type. Interesting stories.

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by gary

Hi Marc,

Been observing from Mauna Kea on the Big Island for the past two weeks.

From the house I can see across the water to Maui and can see all the domes on the top. Can discern individual domes through stabilized binos.

Can also see the scopes on Mauna Kea when I look the other way.

Having dinner with the head mirror technician from the Keck Observatory as I type. Interesting stories.

That sounds awesome. How you're handling the altitude?

[gary]

The solar telescope on Maui is named after the late Daniel Inouye.

Many landmarks in Hawaii are named after him, including the main
international airport in Honolulu and the highway across the Big Island.

A U.S. senator and champion of astronomical observation in Hawaii, I
didn't know much about him until American colleagues told me a little
of his remarkable life, heroism and achievements and forwarded me this
2012 New York Times obituary.

An American hero.

Originally Posted by New York Times

Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, who went to Washington at the birth of his state in 1959, dominated public life in the Hawaiian islands for more than 50 years and became a quiet voice of national conscience during the Watergate scandal and the Iran-contra affair, died on Monday in Bethesda, Md. He was 88.

A statement by his Washington office said he had died of respiratory complications at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. His last word was “aloha,” the statement said.

A hero of World War II who lost his right arm in combat in Europe, Mr. Inouye, a Democrat, served two terms in the House of Representatives early in his career and was first elected to the Senate in 1962. He was the first Japanese-American elected to both the House and the Senate.

After the death of his West Virginia colleague Robert C. Byrd in June 2010, Mr. Inouye became the Senate’s senior member, with a tenure nearing 48 years, and president pro tempore, making him third in the line of presidential succession, after the vice president and speaker of the House. Mr. Byrd’s death also made him the highest-ranking public official of Asian descent in United States history. Months later, he was elected by another overwhelming margin to his ninth consecutive six-year term.

The courtly, soft-spoken Senator Inouye (pronounced in-NO-ay) often deferred publicly to his outspoken and ambitious colleagues, seemingly content behind the scenes to champion Hawaii’s interests. He funneled billions of dollars to strengthen the state’s economy, promote jobs and protect natural resources.
Daniel Inouye won wide admiration for his patience and persistence as a member of the Senate Watergate committee in 1973.


But as crises arose from time to time, he was called upon to take center stage. In 1973, as a member of the Senate Watergate committee, which investigated illegal activities in President Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign, he won wide admiration for patient but persistent questioning of the former attorney general John N. Mitchell and the White House aides H. R. Haldeman, John D. Ehrlichman and John Dean.

When the nationally televised hearings ended in 1974, a Gallup poll found that Mr. Inouye had an 84 percent favorable rating, even higher than the committee’s folksy chairman, Senator Sam Ervin, Democrat of North Carolina. Months later, Nixon, facing certain impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate, resigned. Many of his closest aides went to prison for their roles in the conspiracy.

In 1976, after revelations of abuse of power by the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and other agencies, Mr. Byrd, the majority leader, appointed Mr. Inouye chairman of the Senate Committee on Intelligence, which was established to come up with reforms and monitor clandestine operations. Mr. Byrd hoped Mr. Inouye could win the confidence of a skeptical public and a demoralized intelligence community.

Mr. Inouye largely succeeded. His panel wrote a new intelligence charter, which protected American citizens’ rights, established rules for counterintelligence operations inside the United States, barred the use of journalists and clergymen as covert agents, and required the president to certify that covert actions were necessary for national security. President Jimmy Carter praised his “professionalism and competence.”

Senator Inouye’s reputation for integrity made him an ideal choice as chairman of the Senate committee that investigated the Iran-contra affair in 1987. The committee confirmed that high-ranking American officials, acting in violation of President Ronald Reagan’s policies and the will of Congress, had secretly sold weapons to Iran and used the profits to support rebels fighting the left-wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
Senator Daniel Inouye was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Bill Clinton in 2000.

In nationally televised hearings, a joint Senate-House panel, to avoid seeming prosecutorial, gave wide latitude to witnesses, including Lt. Col. Oliver North and Rear Adm. John M. Poindexter. The beribboned former national security officials used that latitude to portray themselves as patriots and their illegal actions as necessary for national survival in a dangerous world.

“That is an excuse for autocracy, not policy,” an indignant Mr. Inouye said. “Vigilance abroad does not require us to abandon our ideals or the rule of law at home. On the contrary, without our principles and without our ideals, we have little that is special or worthy to defend.”

He said Colonel North and Admiral Poindexter had deceived Congress and the American people, and were advocating “a shadow government” with its own military forces, “free from all checks and balances and free from the law itself.”

Daniel Ken Inouye was born in Honolulu on Sept. 7, 1924, the oldest of four children of Hyotaro and Kame Imanaga Inouye, who had immigrated from Japan. He graduated from McKinley High School, enrolled in premedical studies at the University of Hawaii and was a medical volunteer at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked in 1941.

In 1943, when the United States Army lifted its ban on Japanese-Americans, Mr. Inouye joined the new 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the first all-nisei volunteer unit. It became the most decorated unit in American military history. In 1944, fighting in Italy and France, he won a battlefield commission to second lieutenant. He was shot in the chest, but the bullet was stopped by two silver dollars in his pocket.
Daniel Inouye, in uniform when he was a member of the Army's 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

On April 21, 1945, weeks before the end of the war in Europe, he led an assault near San Terenzo, Italy. His platoon was pinned down by three machine guns. Although shot in the stomach, he ran forward and destroyed one emplacement with a hand grenade and another with his submachine gun. He was crawling toward the third when enemy fire nearly severed his right arm, leaving a grenade, in his words, “clenched in a fist that suddenly didn’t belong to me anymore.” He pried it loose, threw it with his left hand and destroyed the bunker. Stumbling forward, he silenced resistance with gun bursts before being hit in the leg and collapsing unconscious.

His mutilated right arm was amputated in a field hospital. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, which was upgraded to the Medal of Honor, America’s highest military award, by President Bill Clinton in 2000. (Members of the 442nd were believed to have been denied proper recognition because of their race.) He spent two years in Army hospitals, including one in Michigan where he met Bob Dole and Philip Hart, wounded veterans who would also become senators. Mr. Inouye was discharged as a captain in 1947.

He married Margaret Shinobu Awamura in 1949, and they had a son, Daniel Ken Jr. She died in 2006. In 2008 he married Irene Hirano, who is president of the U.S.-Japan Council, a nonprofit group in Washington. She and his son survive, as do a stepdaughter, Jennifer Hirano, and a granddaughter.

Mr. Inouye graduated from the University of Hawaii in 1950 and received his law degree from George Washington University in 1952. He plunged into politics in Honolulu and was elected to the Territorial House of Representatives in 1954 and to the Territorial Senate in 1958. When Hawaii became a state in 1959, he won the islands’ first Congressional seat and became a protégé of Speaker Sam Rayburn and a celebrity in Washington. In 1967 he published a book about his early life, “Journey to Washington,” written with Lawrence Elliott.

In the Senate in 1963 Mr. Inouye forged a bond with the Democratic majority leader, Mike Mansfield. He supported the social and civil rights programs of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He also supported the Vietnam War, although he later turned against American involvement in Vietnam. He delivered the keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, and was mentioned as a possible future vice-presidential candidate.

Senator Inouye’s voting record was moderate to liberal, favoring organized labor, consumer protections, abortion rights, education and environmental protections, but also military appropriations. In 1984, he opposed reparations for Japanese-Americans interned in the West during World War II because of suspect loyalties.

“It would be almost impossible to place a price tag on reparations,” he said. “It would be insulting even to try to do so.”
Correction: Dec. 19, 2012

An obituary on Tuesday about Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii misstated his mother’s maiden name. She was Kame Imanaga, not Imagaga.
Correction: Dec. 27, 2012

An obituary on Dec. 18 about Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii misstated his first wife’s maiden name. She was Margaret Shinobu Awamura, not Margaret Sinobu Awamura.

A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 18, 2012, Section A, Page 33 of the New York edition with the headline: Daniel Inouye, Hawaii’s Quiet Voice of Conscience in Senate, Is Dead at 88

[multiweb (Marc)]

quite a resume.

[gary]

Originally Posted by multiweb

That sounds awesome. How you're handling the altitude?

Hi Marc,

Just got back yesterday from a two week observing trip on Mauna Kea, on the Big Island.

A colleague keeps a 22" Obsession with Argo Navis stored on the Big Island.

Suffice to say, they were the most magnificent skies I have ever observed from.

Little wonder most of the world's biggest telescopes are there.

Our observing spot was at 9200' (2800m) and being below 10,000' you
are just below the level where altitude sickness usually occurs. In fact,
when travelling to the summit at 13,800' (4200m) it is strongly advised
you spend half an hour to an hour at the 9200' to acclimatise first.

There are plenty of warnings that a trip to the summit can be lethal.
It is not recommended that anyone under the age of 16 go to the
summit as it can be detrimental to their development.

You can get from the beach at sea level to 9200' in an hour on high-speed
tarmac road. The final stretch to the summit is well-graded gravel with
switch-backs and is 4WD only and takes about half an hour. There is
no guard rail and one of the effects of altitude can be confusion and poor
judgement of you have to go careful.

It is one of the few places in the world where you can go sea level to
nearly 14,000' in less than two hours.

You need 4WD because coming down there is less air to cool the brakes
and there are no shortage of photos of 2WD vehicles that have caught
ablaze because the driver rode the brakes coming down.

Those wimps who climb Everest only have to climb 12,000 feet to get
from Base Camp to the summit.

In my younger days I had spent time in Pakistan at 15,400 feet
(4700 meters) but with the added advantage of acclimatising over a week.

At our observing spot at 9200' I had no problem helping lift the 22" Dob
out of the vehicle but even a task such as donning or duffing a freezer
suit would leave you catching your breath.

As soon as you step out of the vehicle at 13,800' you notice how thin
the air is. There is 40% less atmosphere available.

You notice it most if you bend over, such as to tie a bootlace.

If you pick up and throw a couple of snowballs, whilst you are doing it
you are fine but as soon as you stop it feels like you have just run up
several flights of stairs and have to catch your breath.

You need to walk slowly.

In surveys, 69% of workers at the observatories have experienced
Acute Altitude Sickness (AAS) at one point or the other. They have
emergency oxygen available and blood O2 level monitors.
I checked my blood O2 and pulse and it was good. Your blood
thickens and you have to be careful.

It's amazing construction workers could ever build the scopes. It's
also more challenging to think clearly at that altitude so workers work
in teams and plan ahead at sea level.

A worker there provided us with an account of a colleague who had
experienced a psychotic episode and unfortunately had to stop working
there.

From an amateur observing point of view the 9200' altitude was a good
compromise. You are above the clouds but there is still sufficient air
to breath without difficulty for most people. Freezer suits take care
of the temperatures that hovered just above or below zero Celsius.

The whole island has a street lighting ordinance that would be the envy of the
amateur astronomy world. The street lights are all dim, fully cut-off and
just at a single narrow wavelength. There is no large
illuminated signage or billboards.

Even at the house we rented at 1000' the skies were fantastic.

The population density is low.

We measured 22.18 SQM at the 9200' observing point.

Since vast areas of the island are covered in dark, rough lava flow,
it acts as the ultimate flocking material.

At the end of the day, you are in the middle of the Pacific at one of the
highest, most remote observing locations on Earth, surrounded by
an ocean that keeps temperatures stable and the seeing superb.

You can see both Polaris and Crux at the same time.

Where else can you go from Hawaiian beauties walking along the beach
to one of the best observing spots on the Earth via tarmac road in less
than an hour?

Basically observing nirvana.

I will post some more photos in a different thread later.

[multiweb (Marc)]

Looks and sounds magic!

[Nikolas (Nik)]

We visited the big island in 94 but could not drive up because they wont allow hire cars up that high you wont be insured if you wreck it on that road. The big Island is my favourite place in the whole world. We were driving home from the Volcanos national park to Kona, it was 11pm when we noticed a bright Violet glow coming from the pacific in the northWest. A few hours later we were woken by sirens warning of an incoming tsunami from an earthquake off Japan but the tsunami never eventuated. Years later I found out that violet glow was Earthquake lights. We are one of a few people to have witnessed this event.