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A few more snapshots taken from the summit of Mauna Loa.
Some show the summit of Mauna Kea about 37km away and you can make out the domes.
The smooth profile of Mauna Kea provides for laminar airflow across it and
combined with its 4,207m altitude and its location in the relatively stable
surroundings of the Pacific give this location some of the best seeing on
the planet. Street lighting and exterior lighting is controlled by ordinances
across the entire island. Even in many of the suburban areas where there
is street lighting, the darkness of the sky is very good.
The Ashra detector shown in the second photo is on the Observatory Road close
to the Mauna Loa summit and would be very, very close the the current lava flows.
It was sited there at this unique position for studying the sources of High Energy
Cosmic Ray sources (GRB, etc) as well as potential observations of earth-grazing neutrino
interactions.
At the time I took these photos at sunset, it quickly became bitterly cold.
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