by Jay Reynolds Freeman
Yet it was not for terrestrial aesthetics that I came to Hawaii. What prompted my expedition was the chance discovery, through conversation with friends, that there is well supported site high on the southern slope of Mauna Kea where amateur astronomers may set up at will for as long as they like. That is the Onizuka Center for International Astronomy Visitor Information Station, or the Visitor Center, for short. They have a web site, at http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/vis/. This facility, at about the 2.7 Km level on the road up to the summit observatories, provides tourists with programs, interpretive and hands-on science, and rest and comfort facilities seven days a week, with a strong emphasis on astronomy. The small, newly-constructed building has static displays, videos, and computer-controlled sequences of images. Its tiny gift shop is well-stocked with souvenirs and beginning astronomy stuff. Even the goodies have an astronomical theme -- there are Mars bars, three kinds of Milky Way, packages of Starburst candies, and astronaut-style freeze-dried ice cream. And for *real* astronomers, there are big pots of piping hot water, with instant coffee and hot chocolate right at hand.
The Visitor Center is well equipped for public astronomy. They have at least four telescopes -- a Meade 16-inch LX200 on its stock mounting, a Celestron 14 on an Astro-Physics 1200, a Celestron C-11 on a Losmandy G-11, and a commercial six-inch Dobson. The three larger instruments are all set up for wheel-out on castered feet or platforms, and when they reach their pre-marked positions on the concrete patio, a quick turn of jackscrews with an electric drill fixes them more rigidly in place for an evening's observing. These instruments are set up for public observing every night to 10 PM, weather permitting, and knowledgeable staff and volunteers put on a fine show. The patio is well located and well designed, on the lee (west) side of the building, with a superb view of the south horizon.
It was interesting to hear comments about how such familiar telescopes performed in heavy-duty service. The Meade was said to have serious optical problems -- astigmatism on axis, that could not be traced to diagonal or eyepieces -- and to be given to electronic glitches as well. The placard on this instrument indicates that it is in part a donation from Meade. I hope the manufacturer has sense enough to see that it gets fixed, considering that thousands of people a year encounter the problems. The Celestrons were more highly regarded, and I heard considerable praise for the Astro-Physics mount.
There are also two sturdy piers bolted to the patio, bearing permanent wedges set for polar alignment, each drilled with bolt patterns for the drive bases of all the popular small to medium Schmidt-Cassegrains. I believe that Celestrons through at least 9.25-inch will fit these piers, and Meades through at least 10-inch. Any other telescope with a flat plate extending beyond its drive base could probably be made to work with a couple of stout C-clamps.
After the end of the public show, the building is often open for an hour or more, to put the telescopes to bed and wrap up the administrivia of the day. Stragglers can duck inside to get warm or refill their hot beverage cups. When the staff finally locks the doors, they don't lock all of them -- the bathrooms stay open 24 hours. They have red internal lighting, and electrical power sockets where you may plug in your portable coffee heater, if you have had the foresight to bring it. The heat is off in the building at night, but the structure has considerable thermal mass, so it stays warm for a long, long time, and besides, the bathrooms are out of the wind.
If you should encounter a real emergency, there are other humans at hand. The dormitory for technicians and users of the summit observatories is only a few hundred meters away. Casual visitors are not allowed, but I am sure they would not turn away anyone who was sick or injured. That building's lights are well shielded, but if those lights, or the red glow from the bathrooms, are too much for you, there are stubby side roads a few tens of meters down the access road where you may set up outside the line of sight to any light except the stars.
There are external power plugs on the side of the building facing the set-up patio. Bring your extension cord, and don't forget a DC adaptor, if your telescope cannot accept line voltage directly. If there are a lot of you, you may need some octopus-outlet fittings as well. The patio has a telephone, and also an external switch to the parking lot lights, which of course were off for the public viewing. The staff will ask you to turn them back on when you leave, assuming it isn't dawn already. The parking lot holds some twenty cars, and portions of it are also well suited for setting up telescopes, in case you would like to peer far to the south, beyond the hip-high retaining wall at the edge of the patio. Using both patio and parking lot, the facility could probably accommodate twelve to fifteen fair-sized amateur telescopes, plus the cars of the folks who brought them. (I am not saying that it would be a good thing to cram it full, just trying to describe its size.)
The sky is as dark as you would expect at 2.7 Km in the middle of an ocean. I could not see any light domes from anything, anywhere. Horizons are good except to the north, where Polaris barely clears the summit of Mauna Kea, and with the caveat that you may wish to choose which side of the building to set up on, depending on how cold your blood is and how interested you are in the southeastern sky: The easterly trade winds are cold by the time they reach the mountain side. The seeing is said to be good, as well, though I did not use more than 106x on my 10-inch Dobson anyway, so the fact that it didn't bother me doesn't say much.
Those horizons are something else. The Visitor Center lies between 19 and 20 degrees north latitude, which means that in the absence of atmospheric refraction, the sea-level horizon would allow objects at 70 or 71 degrees south declination just barely to rise. Refraction and elevation work in your favor, but Mauna Loa blocks the oceans. Anyway, I was working serious deep-sky objects at 65 south declination, and could see alpha Musca, more than 69 degrees south, with the naked eye. The latitude, darkness, and transparency allow viewing of the entire southern Milky Way -- eta Carina, Crux, the Coal Sack, the Jewel Box, and all the other galactic clusters and nebulosity that you have heard about. The Clouds of Magellan are too far south, though perhaps the northern extremity of the Large Cloud could barely be detected in the absolute best of circumstances. Unfortunately for me, late spring is the wrong season to do so.
Local amateur astronomers know of this site and use it well. During each of the six nights I was there, there was at least one Hawaiian observer present. Yet this location seems little heard of on the mainland. It ought to be much better known. The ancient Greeks thought that the Muse of Astronomy was Urania. Yet I think that a better candidate for our patron diety is Pele. The summit facilities on Mauna Kea are widely regarded as the best professional observatory in the world, and the Onizuka Visitor Center may well be the best site for doing amateur astronomy on Earth.