400 Years of the Telescope

We woke to the cloudy residue of hurricane Flossy that past the Big Island during the night. From our 10,000’ location at HP we seemed to be floating in a sea of clouds. Above us the summit was covered in fog and below us a thick sheet of vapor forming a carpet of white that stretched across to all points on the horizon. We were not going to be shooting at the summit today. Instead we packed up the gear and headed down the mountain to the town of Hilo and an interview with Danish astronomer Bo Reipurth of the Institute for Astronomy.

We pulled into the I’miloa Science Center around 11:00 and walked into the beautiful lobby, complete with mosaic flooring, and were greeted by Shawn Laatsch and his associate, Sharon. We were invited to see the MaunaKea: Between Earth and Sky planetarium show. We enjoyed the full-dome experience that the planetarium provided and saw in our mind’s eye how our planned show would appear on the dome.

The computer graphics that made up most of this show gave our production team some interesting ideas for video movement to try with our plan-o-cam. We also realized how careful we needed to be not to make our viewers sick from excessive movement. After the show, Shawn showed our production team some examples of previews for other planetarium shows followed by a wonderful lunch provided by the I’miloa Café within the science center.

Between our meeting with Shawn and our interview scheduled at 4:30pm with Bo Reipurth, Astronomer from the University of Hawaii, we walked over to the offices of the various observatories that we will be taping atop Mauna Kea later in the week. We thanked the dedicated public information officers for their continued generosity and their assistance in creating our schedule for this week.

Dr. Reipurth arrived to the Science Center right on time and we immediately jumped into the content of his interview. He recounted the life and times of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe with pride, being a fellow “Dane” himself. Brahe was one of the first “observational” astronomers who questioned the theories of past philosophers and sought to understand how the heavens worked. He was the prototype for the modern astronomer.

All-in-all, the day was a success. We got a mini-tour of Hilo. We learned about Hawaii’s cultural and astronomical histories from the I’miloa Science Center and we enjoyed an educational interview with Dr. Bo Reipurth with his humanistic view of the life of Tycho Brahe.