Saturday, August 18th - Return to Subaru
It’s pretty cold on Mauna Kea at 5am in the morning as you wait for the sunrise. Yesterday morning’s summit excursion to retrieve our producer, Kris Koenig’s 35mm camera found ourselves freezing in the Mauna Kea wind chill atop the mountain. In a spontaneous decision on the parts of our Director of Photography, Steve Chollet, and myself we decided to trek down the 6 miles from the summit of Mauna Kea. What a challenging and frosty path at 6am. We did, however, make it back to Hale Pohaku base camp for breakfast by 8:30am.
Our workday did not really begin until 5pm when we were scheduled to return to the Subaru Telescope to catch the sunset and the opening of the dome for the Plan-O-Cam and some additional b-roll. Dr. Saeko Hayashi of the facility who helped us to time and coordinate the recording of the sunset once again accompanied us. Mr. Shawn Laatsch of the I’miloa Science Center joined us on this shoot. Shawn helped us to set up the Plan-O-Cam and tote our gear in and out of the telescope facility. Thanks to Shawn and Saeko, our return trip to the Subaru Telescope was a success.
