The adventure continues with another exciting American Museum of Natural History expedition, the January 2010, Hawaii's Observatories: An Astrophysics Symposium. The scheduled highlights include the following.
On the island of Maui:
full day tour on the slopes of the volcano Mount Haleakala,
sunrise visit to the Pan-STARRS telescope, and
bicycle ride down the side of the volcano.
And on the island of Hawaii:
helicopter ride over an active volcano,
exploration of Kilauea Volcano National Park,
submarine cruise of coral reefs,
sunset visit to the Mauna Kea Observatory Complex and tour of one of the Keck telescopes, and
whale watching cruise.
Here is a NASA image of the Keck Observatory.
The tour is led by Dr. Michael Shara, curator of AMNH's Division of Physical Sciences. He is a stellar (in both senses of the word) astrophysicist. My two great friends, Lee and Melinda, are going on the same expedition. There are 17 people on the tour plus the Study Leader, Michael Shara, and an excellent Tour Manager, Michael Kuranoff. The expedition sold out within a day of being posted on AMNH's website. So, AMNH offered a second group. The tour I am on is the second group. Which in an unusual twist (possibly due to a tear in the space-time continuum) is going before the first group.
This is my first visit to Hawaii. I have no idea about which island is which. The archipelago has been formed as the Pacific tectonic plate moves to the northwest over a hot spot, a place where magma from the Earth's core comes up to the ocean floor. The youngest island is Hawaii, the Big Island. Honolulu, the state capital, is on one of the older islands, Oahu, further up the chain. A United States Geological Survey map of the state is above. (Clicking it will give you a larger version.)
