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Here is Michael Kuranoff's group photo taken on day two in Hosmer Grove.


Here is something I came across while fact checking for this blog. This is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) picture of the Pacific Ocean. It shows the line of underwater mountains created as the Pacific tectonic plate moved over the Hawaii hotspot. The line called the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain formed over a period of about 80 million years. There is a bend in the chain about 45 million years ago when the tectonic plate changed direction.

In the morning on Thursday, January 21 we left our hotel for Kona International Airport. No walls, of course. The airport check-in procedure was like going through a labyrinth. You had to go through a line on the right, then back past that to a line on the left. At one of the checkpoints a USDA sniffer checked for food items in my luggage. At the TSA inspection location one person forgot to collect his loose change. The TSA employee, holding the coin container, called him back, "Sir, we are not allowed to accept tips."

My first flight to San Francisco was billed as US Airways flight 6010 but it was actually United Airlines flight 56. It was on a Boeing 767. Due to recent heavy rains in California many people's flights were delayed. We just circled for a few minutes before landing.

My second flight was from San Francisco to Newark on a real US Airways plane, an almost full Airbus 319. Again, at the airport, announcements encouraged people to buy food before boarding. On board the only way to buy food was with a credit card. The flight attendants had a hand-held device through which they swiped the credit card. I got a flight attendant to smile when I asked, "When you are not swiping credit cards through that thing, can you play solitaire on it?" The plane landed on time at about 7:00 am. From the airport I took the monorail, New Jersey Transit, and a taxi and found everything at home just as I had left it.



Images keep popping into my head. My first helicopter ride in Hilo on the island of Hawaii. The trip up the side of Hualalai Volcano in the Pinzgauer.





The 6 foot diameter primary mirror of the Pan-STARRS telescope on Mount Haleakala. The back of the 33 foot diameter primary mirror of one of the Keck Telescopes on Mauna Kea.





Sunrise at the summit of Mount Haleakala. Sunset at the top of Mauna Kea.




And Mount Kilauea, home of Pele, Hawaiian goddess of fire.

The whole expedition was fantastic. This was due, of course, to all the hard work by Michael Shara, Michael Kuranoff, the people at AMNH Expeditions, the people at Siemer and Hand Travel, and all of our guides. Most importantly, it was my fellow travelers who made the trip such a success.

Hualalai Volcano, Hawaii

Wednesday, January 20 we spent on Hualalai Volcano. To locate the volcano in the map in the March 8 blog entry, Hilo, Hawaii, start at 3-Kailua-Kona and go Northeast about three quarters of an inch. You can see the caldera.

In this picture you can see in the foreground on the left and right sides the ohia bush. It is an early colonizer of lava flows. The plant has the unusual property that its stomata close in the presence of sulphur dioxide. In the middle of the picture you can see a fissure. Notice the reddish areas where during the lava flow water reacted with iron in the lava to form "rust" and the yellowish area indicating the presence of sulphur. In the background you can see black lava flows that went down the side of the volcano to the ocean. Notice how some areas are covered by lava and some are spared. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Breakfast at the hotel was a buffet of typical American fare with the addition of local fruits. Since many of the tourists staying at the hotel were Japanese, the breakfast choices also included miso soup, nori (dried seaweed), tofu, and fried rice. In the main lobby next to the main reception counter was an area with the label Japanese Guest Services.


We went to our point of embarkation and transferred to the Pinzgauer all-terrain six-wheel drive vehicle. These vehicles were originally built in Austria during World War II. They are designed for rugged terrain. They have some light airplane parts. They have two oil pumps so that, no matter what the engine orientation, the entire engine is lubricated. They have three driving modes, 4x4, another 4x4, and 6x6. Those must be 4x4 (differentials unlocked) for driving on streets, 4x4 (differentials locked) for driving on rough terrain, and 6x6 (six-wheel drive) for driving on very rough terrain. On our ride we certainly encountered plenty of rough terrain. The tour company, Hawaii Forest & Trail, buys the Pinzgauer vehicles from a company in Arizona. They buy them and modify them so that they meet the traffic codes to be driven on Hawaiian streets.



We headed up the side of Hualalai Volcano to the Realm of the Gods and where local Hawaiians believe their ancestors reside. The area we visited is private land and we passed through two gates going in.

Our Pinzgauer made several stops. We saw a pit crater where the ground collapsed into a void below. We had a photo opportunity at the location shown in the picture at the beginning of this blog entry, saw plenty of ohia plants, descended into, walked inside, and then climbed out of a lava tube.


After we returned home our Tour Manager sent each of us an e-mail with a link to a site with photos he took during our expedition. Here are Michael Kuranoff's pictures of guide Jon showing us how to use a rope to enter a lava tube.

We learned that eleven of the thirteen different climate classifications exist somewhere on the Hawaiian Islands. This is because some areas are on the rainy Northeast sides of the volcanoes, some are on the dry Southwest sides, some are at sea level, some are extreme elevations, and there are lots of areas in between. On our way down the volcano we could smell coffee. Yes, we were passing through an area three miles wide and one mile high where coffee is grown.


After a day on the volcano we returned to our hotel. Each time we entered the low lying area of Kona we saw signs stating 'Entering Tsunami Evacuation Area'. We also saw sirens. And, when we left the area we saw 'Leaving Tsunami Evacuation Area'. [After the recent earthquake in Chile and with the threat of a tsunami hitting Hawaii I saw similar sirens on television and now know they rotate on their central post.] This is our hotel, built on lava right at the edge next to the ocean. The hotel was definitely within the Tsunami Evacuation Area.


The sun set on our final day in Hawaii.


In the evening we had a farewell dinner. Here is Michael Kuranoff's picture taken as Michael Shara addressed our group. Tomorrow we go to Kona International Airport and head off in our separate directions.

National Marine Sanctuary, Hawaii

Wow! It is already Tuesday, January 19. The agenda for the day is lecture in the morning and whale watching cruise in the afternoon. Above, another beautiful sunset in Kona, Hawaii.

A Window into Science was the title of today's lecture. First, we heard about the analemma. If you take a picture of the sun in the sky from the same place at the same time every day (or every some number of days) for a year, the Sun traces out a curve that looks something like a figure eight. That curve is an analemma.

We learned about extra-terrestrial life and exoplanets, planets that circle stars other than our Sun. One strong argument that aliens have never visited planet Earth is that there are no souvenirs; no objects whose construction is beyond our technologies. Places to look for life in our Solar System would be Mars, Europa, and Titan. Europa, a moon of Jupiter, has an icy surface and possibly liquid water beneath the surface. Titan, a moon of Saturn, is made mostly of water ice and rocky material with hydrocarbon lakes. Michael Shara referred to the Hubble Space Telescope as "my favorite discovery machine."



After lunch we went on a two and one half hour whale watching cruise. Here is a picture of our boat. There was a naturalist on board who explained what we were seeing. Over the island we could see patches of vog; a combination of the words volcano and fog; a fog with sulphur dioxide. We saw tent-like objects on the water. They were used for farming fish for local restaurants. We saw humpback whales. These humpback whales spend the summer off Alaska and come to Hawaii in the winter to have their calves. There are two kinds of whales. Those with baleen which are sort of like combs that they use to filter their food (krill and small fish) from a mouthful of water. And those with teeth. The baleen whales are the less social. If one encounters danger and vocalizes, other whales were get the message and flee. The toothed whales are more social. If one encounters danger, for example, it has beached itself, the others will go to its aid and end up beaching themselves. The humpbacks we were seeing were baleen whales.


Perhaps the most spectacular thing on the whale watch happened as we were returning to Kona. Approaching the boat from the front was a pod of spinner dolphins. They jumped out of the water and spun around their long axis before landing back in the water. This picture is from Wikipedia and is courtesy of Wild Side Specialty Tours.


Near the dock was this sign marking the start and the end of the Ironman Hawaii competition. The Triathlon involves swimming 2.4 miles, then bicycling 112 miles, and then running a 26.2 mile marathon. The very first competition was run in Honolulu in 1978 by some runners (who thought runners were the best athletes) and some swimmers (who though swimmers were the best athletes) after reading an article in Sports Illustrated about a bicyclist who had the greatest oxygen update ever measured. The event was moved to Kona in 1982. The place where the event starts is just some sand and some rocks; not a very impressive beach. It was right next to the pier where we boarded the boat.

Another wonderful dinner at the hotel. And tomorrow another volcano.

Mauna Kea Observatory Complex, Hawaii

The main event on Monday, January 18 was a sunset visit to the twin 10 meter diameter Keck Telescopes at the 13,796 foot peak of Mauna Kea.

But first, we had another lecture, Cosmology. It was a continuation of where we left off the day before and covered some of the following. Gamma ray bursts, short lived beams of very intense gamma rays that are thought to occur when a high mass star collapses in a supernova event to become a black hole. Hubble's Law, v = Hd, where v is the velocity of a galaxy, H is the Hubble constant, and d is the distance to the galaxy. And the Cosmological Constant which is the energy associated with empty space. It is due to electron-positron pairs being created, repelling, and annihilating. After lunch we left the hotel.

The group rode in two four wheel drive vehicles, Ford E-350 small buses with heavy duty brakes. On top of the mountain the air is so thin that regular disk brakes do not work, they overheat. So coming down the drivers split braking between the transmission and the brakes. We picked up dinner and headed out on Saddle Road. So named because it is on the saddle between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. We passed the Military Reservation and did not hear any explosions. (Which we were told sometimes seem timed to occur when vehicles are passing.) We stopped at the 9,000 foot level where the astronomers live for a lecture and hot picnic dinner. We spent some time here to become acclimated to the altitude. Then we proceeded up the side of Mauna Kea. The road was paved up to 9,200 feet; then there was an unpaved washboard stretch, described as like driving on Mars, up to 13,000 feet; and then the final section was paved.


At the summit we were told, take your time, move slowly, avoid exertion, breathe deeply. There was 40% of the oxygen that there is at sea level. It was so dry, that even though the temperature was below freezing, our exhaled breath was not visible. In the picture to the right, below the dome, you can see our two buses and an emergency evacuation vehicle (in case someone suffers from altitude sickness near 13,796 feet). One of our guides pointed out a terminal moraine deposited by an ice age glacier, near the top of the volcano! It was interesting to see that our two guides merged into our group. We were going inside the telescope domes, something they don't normally get to do. The air inside the domes is air conditioned during the day, so that when the domes are opened at night changes in size or shape due to changing air temperature are minimized.

Each of the two telescopes has a ten meter (33 feet) diameter primary mirror. It is made of 36 hexagonal shaped sections to cut down on weight. Each section can be aimed independently. Here are pictures of the primary mirror from the back and from the side. In the side view, supports behind the mirror are painted white and supports in front are black.



Below is a picture of the secondary mirror. There is something very interesting in this picture. Notice that all the supports are round pipes; except for one. In the lower left, the second one up is hexagonal in cross-section. It is part of the adaptive optics system (described below).




A laser excites sodium atoms above what little atmosphere there is at this altitude creating an artificial star. This can be used to determine what the atmospheric distortion is at any moment. Then the shape of a deformable adaptive optics mirror is constantly changed to compensate for air turbulence. With this recent improvement the Keck telescopes can take pictures of better quality than the Hubble Space Telescope. Here is a picture of the control room.



The scientist using the telescope was in Toledo, Ohio. Here are duplicate screens showing what was on the experimenter's monitors.









Here is a picture of the rear of the detector.










Here is a picture of the side of the detector.








A system of mirrors is being set up so that the two telescopes can work together as an interferometer. The telescopes are 85 meters (279 feet) apart. The result will give the angular resolution of an 85 meter diameter telescope.

At the end we went outside. I've never seen Mars so red. I felt a little light-headed, a little tired. No one needed the emergency evacuation vehicle. We went down to 9,000 feet for some star-gazing before returning to our hotel.

The Keck Observatory is a world leading, state-of-the-art telescope facility observing in the optical and near-infrared wave-lengths. It has been real neat to be up close.

On the agenda for tomorrow, a whale watching cruise.

Kailua-Kona, Hawaii

Sunday, January 17 we headed down the mountain and around the coast headed toward Kona.


Our first stop was at Punaluu Black Sand Beach. The black sand results from the breakdown of lava. We were told not to disturb any of the endangered green sea turtles that we might see in the area.

The main item on the itinerary for the day was a submarine ride in coral reefs "teeming with tropical fish". This was canceled due to "too much turbidity". There were strong currents on this side of the island; actually good for surfers.


We went to a reconstructed (1/2 size) Hawaiian royal temple on royal grounds and between it and the ocean, the Place of Refuge. The stone wall marks the boundary between the two. Below is a picture of the wooden images outside the temple. Above is a picture of an endangered green turtle that posed for this shot.


We learned that if a person violated Hawaiian law or kapu by doing something that offended the gods, this was often punishable by death, and if he swam to the Place of Refuge, he could be blessed by a Hawaiian priest and forgiven and able to return home. One of our people asked an interesting question. "Does it still work?" The answer was that an incident occurred several years ago. A person was fleeing the police. He ran onto the Place of Refuge. The police did not follow; they waited. It was hot; there was no food and no water. After a while the person gave himself up.

The Polynesian derived Hawaiian language did not have a written language. Early missionaries translated the sounds of the spoken language into a written language. In doing so, some of the subtleties have been lost. The written language has 13 letters (sometimes described as 12 letters and one symbol). The vowels: a, e, i, o, and u, and the consonants: h, k, l, m, n, p, w, and ʻ. Hawaiian words end with a vowel. The symbol ʻ is the ʻokina. It marks a glottal stop. [Something similar in English might be the hyphen in uh-oh!] In Hawaiian the name of the island is Hawaiʻi.

In the town of Captain Cook we stopped for a typical Hawaiian lunch at the Manago Hotel. Lunch included seaweed salad, potato salad, rice, and a tofu and pork dish.


We continued on to Kona and the Sheraton Keauhou Bay Resort. Here is the view from my room.

Michael Shara gave a lecture, Einstein. This was added because the submarine ride was canceled. He was well prepared. He was the curator of the AMNH's exhibit with the same name. We learned about Einstein's "miracle year", 1905, when he published groundbreaking papers on special relativity, Brownian motion, and the photoelectric effect. Each one of these worthy of a Nobel Prize. We also heard about many aspects of Einstein's personal life. I learned, the faster something moves through space, the slower it moves through time.

During the break between lectures, a group of people were watching the manta rays in the ocean from a hotel patio. All of a sudden a wave that was significantly larger than all the others struck. I was among those who got wet.


Michael Shara gave us another lecture, this one on cosmology, Nebulae and Galaxies. We saw the famous picture taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of the Abell 2218 group of galaxies. [Picture courtesy of NASA and ESA.] Galaxies and dark matter cause the gravitational lensing visible as the arcs in the picture. The arcs are images of even more distant galaxies bent by the lensing effect of the closer galaxies and dark matter. Super massive black holes and quasars, specifically quasar 3C 273, were discussed. We heard about the surface of last scattering, after the first 300,000 years of the universe, beyond which it is too foggy for telescopes to see. To make it easy to understand the Big Bang and expansion of the universe, Michael explained, the center of the explosion is everywhere. With reference to galactic dark matter, Michael Shara said, "there be dragons, terra incognita".

Tomorrow is a big day. A sunset visit to the Mauna Kea Observatory Complex at 13,796 feet.

Volcano Village, Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii

Saturday, January 16 we would spend in Kilauea Volcano National Park. But first, we had a lecture by volcanologist Cheryl Ganseki.

Usually when we think of volcanoes we think of volcanoes at subduction boundaries, where one tectonic plate is moving under another. Eruptions are typically violent. Mount St. Helens is an example. The Hawaiian Islands are different. The Pacific tectonic plate is moving over a hot spot where hot magma from the Earth's interior rises. Part of the process is heat rising, convection, and part is melting due to conduction. The magma flows up and becomes lava. Eruptions are not violent. The flows form a volcano that is shaped like a shield.

Hawaiian shield volcanoes go through several stages.

1. Submarine stage. The volcano forms on the seabed. There is a new island forming Southeast of the Big Island. Loihi Seamount is completely underwater.
   
2. Explosive stage. When the volcano reaches the water surface, hot lava meeting water at the surface release large quantities of steam.
   
3. Subaerial stage. Once the volcano has gotten large enough it forms the shield shape and lava flows on top of cooled lava and the flows are relatively gentle. There are caldera and fissure eruptions.
   
4. Postshield stage. Here the lava changes consistency and typically does not flow all the way to the ocean. It increases the slope of the volcano.
   
5. Erosional stage. The volcano becomes dormant, sinks into the seabed due to its enormous weight, and suffers rain and wind erosion and landslides. Thus the island gets smaller.
   
6. Rejuvenation stage. The volcano may become active again with infrequent gentle lava flows.
   
7. Coral atoll stage. Eventually the volcano is reduced to sea level and becomes an atoll surrounded by coral reefs.

There are a total of 132 volcanoes in the Hawaiian chain going from nascent Loihi in the submarine stage in the Southeast to many underwater mounts proceeding up to the Northwest. The process has been going on for 80 million years.


We went to Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. The Park Headquarters had interesting exhibits. One demonstrated how seeds might have arrived on the islands by being stuck to bird feathers and how snails might have been on bird feet. It is not known how a bat might have arrived. Fossil remains indicate it arrived long before people.




Halemaumau caldera where Pele, Hawaiian goddess of fire, lives was our next photo opportunity. The picture at the top of this blog entry is of Pele's home. We went to Sulphur Banks, Steaming Bluff by a fissure wall, and places with gases coming out of the ground.

We went to the Jaggar Museum and Observatory. Outside we had a good view of Pele's home. Then the wind shifted and we were all called inside; too much sulphur dioxide (SO₂).


Kilauea Iki lava lake was formed by a 1959 eruption. The lava was much higher (as you can see around the edges) and then drained back into the magma chamber.












Thurston Lava Tube was the next stop. Lava tubes form when lava is flowing; the top hardens; the sides harden; and lava continues to flow inside wearing away the bottom surface; and then the hot lava drains out. In places we could see plant roots coming down from the roof of the lava tube.



We went in search of a lava tree mold. Tree molds form when flowing lava surrounds a tree; cools enough to harden; and then the tree burns away. Here is one from a 1974 eruption. In the foreground is an ohelo plant. Its berries are a favorite food of the Nene.









Next stop, search for the Nene, the Hawaiian goose. The Nene is the state bird of Hawaii, endemic to Hawaii, and has been brought back from almost extinction.

Then we rode among the lava flows along the Chain of Craters Road all the way to the ocean.



After dark we returned to the Jagger Museum for one last look at the crater where Pele lives. [The brightness and contrast of this picture were adjusted with iPhoto.] Then it was back to Kilauea Lodge.

Who would have thought it would be so interesting to spend a day on the side of a volcano‽ [There, I got in an interrobang.]

Kilauea Lodge is located in the village of Volcano, zip code 96785. I thought it would be neat to have the post cards I sent postmarked: Volcano, HI. I walked to the post office. In order to get a feeling for how long it takes the cards to arrive, I typically send myself one too. Not only did the card arrive home after I did, but it had a Honolulu, HI postmark. That's not even the same island!

Tomorrow we head for Kona on the West coast of the Big Island. It will be our base for the remainder of the trip.

Hilo, Hawaii

Here is a Landsat image of the island of Hawaii, courtesy of NASA. This island is formed by five shield volcanos and its longest dimension is about 93 miles. I've tried to locate: 1-Hilo, 2-Kilauea Volcano, 3-Kailua-Kona, and 4-Mauna Kea observatories. Mauna Loa is the large volcano near the center.

On Friday, January 15 we flew on Hawaiian Airlines flight 0132 for the 36 minute flight from Maui to Hilo International Airport on the East side of the island of Hawaii. The aircraft was a Boeing 717 with 117 seats. Another airport building with no walls!

Now here it got complicated. The plan was to take a helicopter ride over Kilauea Volcano viewing geothermal activity. But the helicopter only carries six passengers. So our group was split into three smaller groups. Each of these took the helicopter ride, visited Big Island Candies, and had lunch in the Hilo Bay Cafe, all at different times. Our Tour Manager made everything flow smoothly.


Safari Helicopters has an open flight line, no TSA security. Coats and bags are not permitted; only cameras and binoculars. To balance the aircraft, we were weighed before our seats were assigned. The A-Star Ariel Special 350 has seats for the pilot and two passengers in the front row and for four passengers in the rear row of seats. Before boarding we had a safety briefing and were issued our life vests. Never go beyond the front half of the helicopter. The back rotor spins at ten times the speed of the top rotor. We we each assigned a number. Since the engine was on and noisy, boarding was all orchestrated by hand signals. On board, each person had noise cancellation headphones with a sound feed so that we could hear what pilot Richard was saying.


Fortunately the weather was terrific. The only way I knew we had taken off was that all of a sudden things on the ground started moving and getting smaller. Kilauea Volcano is the most active volcano on the planet. It has been erupting almost continuously since 1983. [The main constituents of volcanic gases are water vapor (H₂O), carbon dioxide (CO₂), sulfur dioxide (SO₂), and hydrogen sulfide (H₂S).]


On the 45 minute flight we saw, among other things, smoking craters and vents, a person walking (!), silvery fresh lava flows, and where lava had flowed into a housing development, gaps in the lava with trees, portions of streets, and even one house. I liked that the pilot took safety seriously. He narrated as we flew, describing what we were seeing. At one point another helicopter suddenly appeared over a hill at one o'clock (the direction). Richard stopped talking mid-sentence. Once we and the other craft had successfully passed he resumed where he had left off. (These two pictures were taken inside the helicopter.) I purchased the DVD of our flight.


Where did we go on our helicopter ride? Look at the map above; go to Kilauea Volcano; to the East is a horseshoe shaped lava flow; the right arm has gotten wider and flowed through Royal Gardens Subdivision.

Then we had a special treat that wasn't on the itinerary. One of the people in our group has been involved with the Imiloa Astronomy Center. She and our Tour Manager arranged for us to visit. The theme is Where Astronomy Meets Hawaiian Culture and it opened in 2006. There are numerous exhibits. It even has a 3-D planetarium. (Now that's something I'd like to see.) Explaining some of the exhibits was Chad Kalepa Baybayan, Resident Navigator. (Isn't that an oxymoron?) He described how early Polynesians navigated to the Hawaiian Islands across more than 2000 miles of open ocean some time between 300 to 800 A. D. Without our modern instruments, they did this by measuring their speed, time, and direction. They observed the sun, stars, wind, swells, rhythm of their double-hull canoes, seaweed, birds--terns, clouds (even the color of the clouds). They used the fact that on the lee side of islands there are no or small waves. Even though they couldn't use Polaris, the North Star, they could use pairs of stars to point South. The Resident Navigator spoke of his voyages on a replica boat using traditional navigation.



Next stop, Kilauea Lodge. It is located at about 5000 feet and is just outside Volcanoes National Park. Originally built as a YMCA camp, now it is a lodge and restaurant. It is a bit rustic, no television, no telephones, but the heated towels were very nice. My breakfast included a half papaya with lime, quite a treat. [It was bit hazy when I took this picture. The brightness and contrast were adjusted using iPhoto.]

Tomorrow, on the ground at an active volcano.