The Story …
A Phenomena Conspiracy
A number of factors conspire to make star gazing within the Crater a world class event. Geographical remoteness and high altitude keep both air pollution and light pollution to a minimum. For the 80% of Americans unable to see the Milky Way because of light pollution, this could mean a lot. At an atmospheric pressure of 71 kPa/533 mm Hg, the high altitude air is thinner, meaning less atmospheric interference between the naked eye and the stars. Add to this a meteorological phenomenon called an inversion layer that, when in place, keeps air above 7000 ft (~2100m) over Hawaii at a very low, desert like humidity with air so clear and dry the stars don’t even twinkle. Good binoculars or a telescope can come in very handy here, taking fuller advantage of this phenomenal mix.
Night Sight
All this is going to get wasted if night vision has been blinded by bright flashlights, smartphone screens, stove flames or similar sources of artificial light. Even a day spent at the beach under the intense tropical Hawaiian sun can reduce night vision long after the sun has set. The literature reports night vision recovery time from flash light to be highly individual but in general the eyes need at least a half hour in the presence of no light except that of the stars to maximize night vision. For reading star charts or performing other tasks, some people use a very low intensity deep red light while others prefer dimmable yellow-green (555 nm). There are merits for either light source in reducing night blindness and charts can be printed using colors to maximize readability so light level can be kept very low. Still, however interesting and informative star charts may be, it’s a shame to deny the eyes a chance to sensitize completely in the absence of any light source whatsoever for the best possible view of the stars. Ironically one of the factors that can diminish night vision is altitude, the very phenomenon that makes the sky clearer. Inside the crater one will be at around 7000 feet, a little above 2000 meters.
A Different Hawaii
You’re deep in the Crater with its lunar-like landscape, with its walls surrounding and blocking the rest of the world from view. You could be almost anywhere on any world your imagination allowed. But be forewarned. For those who associate Hawaii with palm tree beaches and gentle, near perfect temperature nights, the Crater will not seem like Hawaii at all. This Maui Crater nighttime Hawaii can be fiercely cold, near or below freezing, unaccommodating, stringent and austere. But give this fierce and rugged face of Hawaii a chance and you might just find this too is a Hawaii worth knowing. This is volcanic Hawaii, this is Pele Hawaii, more in tune with the original islands met by ancient Polynesian discovers, navigating across the vast Pacific by these very stars. Find Maui in the sky, not the island Maui but Maui the mythical Hawaiian superman from which the island gets its name. Yes, he’s right there fishing the Hawaiian islands out of the ocean just where IAU star charts place Hercules.
The Full Moon
The night of full moon is another story. While not a night for star gazing at its best, the Crater illuminated by the full moon can seem like an extension of the moon itself. If you are lucky, beguiling phenomena like the Brocken spectre or a seldom encountered lunar rainbow, popularly called moonbows can accentuate the wonder of the nighttime experience. In the Holua campground bird cries greeting the rising moon create a cacophonous but amazing symphony. If you want to try it the ancient Hawaiian way, instead of the man in the moon search for Hina Nui, patroness of tapa makers, and goddess of the moon pounding tapa (cloth) on an anvil, making tomorrow’s clouds.
Links
Search and you will find simply awesome photos of bright moonbows and fantastic starry skies. For the most part, these photos are as much fantasy as fantastic, achieved more through technology than the human eye. Perhaps certain nocturnal birds with phenomenal night vision see the world this way. It’s just hard to resist taking such photos, but don’t be disappointed by what you will really see. There is great beauty in the subtlety of a moonbow and an awe and wonder in lying below a star-filled night sky photos and video can’t quite convey.
Ancient Hawaiian Constellations
Haleakala Night Sky
A camera atop Haleakala aimed at the sky can be accessed via the “Haleakala Night Sky” link above. The camera at the link above is closer to what humans see with the naked eye. What you see is live but you may have to contend with cloud cover or moonlight blocking out the stars at the moment of observing. Also, you’ll have to access it at night or when it’s night in Hawaii if you’re in a different time zone. But the website also provides a months worth of archived footage where you can search the sky under various conditions.
For the photo of the Silversword at the top of the page I resisted the temptation to take advantage of digital and software technology available and have left it pretty much as the human naked eye accustomed to darkness and away from sources of light might see it, if anything a slight big darker, nevertheless giving a hint of what it’s like encountering a group of these plants eerily glowing on the trail, their leaves shining under the full moon all by themselves, living up to the silver in their name Silversword.
About creating this post in WordPress
A little more tech goes into creating this particular post than the post entitled “The Crater”. When I tried posting the picture of the Silversword at the top against the usual white background, the effect was far from what I wanted. The almost magical way the leaves of the Silversword plant were glistening in the moonlight when I took the picture just didn’t get through on a white background. Providing a black background brought this glistening out better, not as good as real life, but a little closer to it. The black background necessitated changing colors for text. WordPress makes it easy to make these changes site wide, but a little more tech is required to limit the changes to one specific page. It’s to WordPress’s credit that the changes can be made with only a few lines of CSS code.
There were quite a number of minor changes I was happy to make as well to create an aesthetic sense of balance I found lacking in the default layout.