hello I'm Bob hustler I am an astronomer
at Nottingham University and I was just
on a observing trip to Hawaii and Brady
gave me this little camera that I took
with me to record whatever I thought was
interesting for a general audience and
sixty symbols and yeah this is what we
made our it it is a quarter to four on
27th of February and I am on my way to
the bus to catch a plane to Hawaii where
we'll go observing on a telescope and I
will try to take you with me
so I'm standing at the main building if
you look around that these are the
dormitories
um so this is a picture of the hotel
basically where you stay as an observer
it's roughly at 3,000 meters above sea
level so it's between the mountains
close to the settle Road it's basically
a hotel but only astronomers stay there
so there's they cruise for the
telescopes and night cruise the reason
it's here not under sunlight is because
under sunlight it's too high so you
can't really sleep there
so you go down to 3,000 meters from 4200
something for me being an astronomer was
all about going observing going to
telescopes and gathering your data so we
don't have labs that we can work in and
do experiments this is where we go and
do the hard work and gather the data and
then come back and yeah spend months
sitting in front of our computer
analyzing the data and for me part of
the whole romance about being an
observational astronomer was actually
going out to use the telescopes in these
exotic parts of the world I I find it
exciting night I find it you get a real
connection with what it is that you're
doing and you get to travel to these
wonderful exotic places being on top of
Mauna Kea in Hawaii it really does feel
like you're out of this world it's it's
it's not like any other place on earth
in fact it's more like Mars than
anywhere else
welcome to mama Quilla uber
two-millimeter a soup I will take no
idea what that CF HD Gemini but I think
that's Hawaiian telescope this this so
these are a few images from the actual
telescope that I've been using though
this is ukirt inside so what you see is
basically unfortunately the mirror is
still covered so that it's closed
there's west-east south-north marked on
the cover so this is where the mirror is
and then this black tube in the middle
it's a very very long hue bits three and
a half meters or something like that
that's the actual camera so this is the
wide field camera that we've been using
it's an infrared telescope so we're
using infrared light which is slightly
redder than red so this is one of the
sunsets from Mauna Kea and it's really
really beautiful it's actually so
beautiful that tourists spent roughly a
hundred dollars or so to take a bus to
go up to the summit just to see the
sunset for us it's it's actually we are
quite lucky because we were allowed I
should say to go outside because in
principle we should be working at that
time so we start working at five minutes
to sunset doing some camera calibrations
and stuff but the telescope operator did
that and Alice and I were allowed to go
outside and try the sunset as the Sun
setting you need to open the dome so
that the telescope temperature in the
air temperature inside the dome
equalizes you don't have turbulence for
me that was always quite a thrilling
part I always like to go into the dome
itself and and actually watch the dome
open and feel the whole machinery shake
and then maybe peek out and and again if
if you're on Mauna Kea
you can often consider yourself that
you're the highest person in the whole
Pacific at that moment you know that's
quite a quite an exciting thought so
this is an image where we actually hike
to the real summit of Mauna Kea which is
just 200 meters hike and very very
exhausting 200 meters height I should
say and in this image you see a few
telescopes on the right side the white
bubble that's the the CF HT
french-canadian telescope then the the
big silver one is a very famous one it's
Gemini so that's from e9 North to be
exact there's another one in Chile and
then it's Hawaiian University telescope
and the one on the left side the one
that is open I can actually see a bit of
the telescope inside and that's you
could so it's a three and a half meter
mirror in there it's the biggest
infrared telescope on the world and this
is the telescope that we've been using
when we were there so this is actually
quite a four holiday picture I'm
controlling we've been out for the
sunset again and this is a picture that
I took roughly when we had an earthquake
so I personally didn't feel it because I
probably just thought it was one of the
big events around us moving but Alice
felt it when we came back to the
telescope Thor told us that where there
wasn't an earthquake and we looked up
the information which is the next image
it was a 4.4 magnitude earthquake
roughly ten kilometers away from the
telescope so very very close and it
actually shifted the telescope so the
telescope is built in a way I probably
saw that it's it's basically a metal
structure and that is able to move
freely and it's only held in place by
these Pistons so that's a metal piston
that looks like this roughly and this
two of those hold two telescope if there
is an earthquake this breaks and this is
the actual piston that broken out in our
earthquake so the telescope was out of
place by half a millimeter or a
millimeter which of course was big
enough to screw up our pointing so we
didn't actually know where the telescope
was pointing so we had to fix that so we
had a long screw like that sighs and I
had to screw that in with a lot of force
so you can see me working hard and
breathing a lot working hard to to
actually move the telescope into place I
was quite happy because you know it was
very special it was also very special
because this earthquake was specially
there was an actual Mauna Kea earthquake
which are quite rare
how often can you actually move a
telescope I thought that was quite
exciting so this is a picture of
basically the control room the telescope
is just behind the wall the whole
telescope is automated so much that
you're basically working for two minutes
and then the computer does all the
observations so you hang around and
spend half an hour browsing the web
checking Facebook writing emails oh it
can be very very boring absolutely
particularly if you're doing very long
exposures if you're doing the same thing
over and over again yeah you can just be
sitting there counting the hours down
pressing buttons and drinking coffee and
listening to music and I was quite lucky
on this this run you can actually do
some work so I have my work with me
unfortunately there is 4,200 meters high
so it's it's lack of oxygen it's really
hard to concentrate and you're
constantly having a very slight headache
and you also get quite stupid because
there's a lack of oxygen about there we
build these telescopes to be above as
much of the atmosphere as we can for
image quality purposes but the higher we
go in the atmosphere the less oxygen
there is for our brains and so you can
find that you not only physically slow
down but it's quite obvious that you
mentally slow down as well and if
something goes wrong if you're
confronted with a problem you can take a
just to fix it whereas you might call
down for advice from someone working at
sea level and they'll point out the
obvious solutions straight away
observing is unfortunately a very small
part of most astronomers lives
I've only been observing three times in
seven or eight years now so once in
southern Spain and twice in Hawaii well
to be honest I don't get to go observing
very much anymore which makes me a bit
sad I did most of my observing as a
student now either I get my my time
through this service mode where it's
done on your behalf or I use telescopes
like the Hubble Space Telescope where
you're not really going to get a chance
to go up and press any buttons
I've just walked all through the night
so I didn't actually smeet which is
surprising that I'm I'm actually quite
awake I'm quite okay