JumpStart by Robb Armstrong for March 04, 2023

Well, the helicopter is one way around the roadblocks…

That’s because your definition of excitement differs from theirs, Marcy!

Talk about thrill seeking.

I didn’t realize it snowed on those peaks in Hawaii.

At nearly 14000 feet, I would be surprised if there is any precipitation at all. I was there once, on the peak! No snow, no clouds, and somewhat short on air. That’s why the telescopes are there!

You had me at hello-copter ride!

And when night comes, they can go to the observatory there and gaze at the cosmos!

In case you didn’t notice the dome in the background: Mauna Kea is the site of a famous high-altitude family of telescopes, two of them among the world’s largest. www.maunakeaobservatories.org. It’s at about 14,000 feet, so Joe and Marcy can have a nice long ride down. But I hope they looked around at the instruments before coming down!

For all of those who have trouble believing it snows at 13,000+ feet, here are the Mauna Kea webcams

Where people ski is slightly lower than where the optical telescopes are. The slope are very not long nor steep, but that is skiing in Hawaii.

http://mkwc.ifa.hawaii.edu/current/cams/index.cgi?mode=multi

But if you haven’t had time to adjust to the thinner atmosphere (as would be the case if you rode up on a helicopter), you would soon be seriously hurting. A headache and shortness of breath. Even if you are in good shape.

I toured the Keck I telescope in 1994. It was balmy outdoors and freezing within the dome where they keep it night-time temperature.I could feel the effect of the reduced oxygen and kept reminding myself to move sslloowly…And my group had spent more than an hour at the visitors center down at 9200 ft. to help acclimate.

They were still building the Subaru Telescope a short distance away. A couple of us walked (slowly, slowly) over there and then marveled at the guy working next to the exhaust of a generator. Bad enough to be short of air, but to also be working near those fumes.. But he probably came up nearly every day and was reasonably acclimated.

The telescopes are not the kind that you can casually use your eyeball to look through.. At best, you will look at images on a screen. That same lack of oxygen affects your night vision. The sky may be wonderful, but you will trouble seeing fainter stars. . Of course, if you fall down from lack of oxygen, they are all “fainter” stars…

I mean, visiting the observatories (if they’re open) would be just as good, and probably less likely for injury

A few months ago there was a blizzard alert for the higher elevations of the Big Island, aka Hawai’i.

appearances and names are sometimes deceiving

depends on what ya do on them. ;)

I learn something new every day!