Excitement Overload - Mauna Kea

Star Gazing

Mauna Kea Observatories - pic courtesy google ofcourse

A clear night sky.... a sky full of stars, is always high on my list.  I've tried catching one anywhere I could. And it's not easy....what with Hyderabad or any city, or for that matter town or even village having so much light, that the haze pretty much blocks out possibility of any decent star gazing.

I've tried mountainous regions, small towns, highways....Bidar, Ooty, Munnar....none worked.

Early this year when we were at Corbett, Dhruva, Diksha and I tried going down the mountain just to get away from the resort lights, but couldn't get too far because of the elephant hazard of the area.

The best night sky I've seen has been at Kufri, base of the Himalayas, fourteen years ago...... a sight I've always hoped I'd see again sometime in life.

All this is context for what's coming.

Tomorrow we're going on a 'Star Gazing Tour', to Mauna Kea, the highest island mountain in the world. Per lonely planet, Mauna Kea is "possibly the world's best place to observe stars", and home to the world's largest observatories.

Now you get the excitement !

And it's also so wonderful how it came about. 

Aunty told me about the observatory in Hawaii, at Mauna Kea, and says check and see what tours they have.

I'm sitting on my laptop this morning, and the tours are looking all booked out, right until mid august, plus there is no pick up from Hilo, and I'm sitting all confused and disappointed.......when aunty's spontaneity blew me. She says "I know where the tours office in Hilo is, close your laptop, lets go ask". And I'm like "right now?!?", and she says "yes, why not... come". 

Within five minutes, we're in the car and on our way to the tours office. And such a good thing that was. We got bookings for Monday, a 'star gazing and sun rise tour', one that starts at 2.30 at night...... and I can't contain the excitement. 

I read that Mauna Kea's altitude and isolation in the middle of the pacific ocean make it the best possible location for an observatory. And while the summit is often covered in snow, it offers one of the clearest skies as the air is extremely dry....and altitude is so high that we'll mostly be above the clouds. Temperature is freezing, 0 degrees C, said the tour guide. The summit is so high that visitors have to stop half way up at a visitors station for atleast an hour, to acclimate to atmospheric conditions before going to the summit. It's the worlds quickest climb from sea level to that altitude. But none of this is fazing me. No threat of the cold, no fear of asthma, no nothing.

I just want to see that sky

That's at the tour office, and as I'm taking this picture of the guy showing Kamlesh aunty where she needs to get to, he says " not just us, I want you to come here and get a picture of this map, for you to get from Hilo to Mauna Kea from where you'll get picked up"

And I did. 

Tom night we need to report at that point at 2.30 at night, and it's an hour from home. Gosh, I can't wait :)