Dusk image of latest Kilauea eruption

I hate living in cities. It’s easy to forget stars even exist sometimes.

Beautiful.

Second.

Perspective. Small.

Motherfucker I miss living in the middle of nowhere.

There is a circle of campers missing from this picture.

I miss being able to see stars. :(

The sky is even clearer if you get away from the volcano and drive 9000ft up Mauna Kea to the halfway point (the observatory itself is at 14,000ft). Chances are that by day, you will never have seen a sky that is such a dark blue, and by night, you will never have seen a sky that is as bright.

DX10.1 looks pretty good. /

I love just lying on the grass in my backyard, looking up at the sky… brb.

I nce slept on a mountaintop in Africa 50 miles from nearest city and 10 miles from nearest electrical outlet… I’ve never seen such darkness before or after.
The sunset was stunning and they were burning sugarcane in the valley so thereøs some similarities.

Living in a very densely populated country made the experience even stronger.

This looks great. I want to go look at volcanos.

Go out to the Davis Mountains or Big Bend, it’s a lot closer, cheaper, and is just as dark at night :)

— Alan

Mauna Kea is pretty excellent though. When we lived in Hawaii (Oahu actually, this was a mini vacation) I got to go up and see the observatory first hand. So weird seeing snow on top of a mountain on an island in the middle of the Pacific and knowing that there is, like, jungle* down below.

Speaking of which, I still have a water bottle full of black sand from the beaches near Kilauea that got lava’d over a while back.

*I don’t think Hawaii has any of what scientists would call jungles, but it does have big tropical forest things which are full of win and awesome. Great place to grow up.

That’s so awesome. Dark skies FTW!

Did you take that picture Dave?

I wish, but no. I frequent a number of USGS websites because I have a strong amateur interest in vulcanology. This link will take you to the Hawaiian volcano observatory’s images archive. I do love dark skies, though. There are many places in the American west where you can still see stars like that, but you have to get a couple hundred miles away from any cities first. When I can, I do.

I’d call it a jungle. Not to mention the fact that lots of tourists get lost in there and never return.

— Alan

our normal, clean air is being disrupted by this. Lately, honolulu has reminded me of LA due to the vogg.

Kilauea just had the major eruption that experts were warning on.

Blue methane flames

I tracked down this news source that has a lot of great info for those who like to read up on what’s going on:

http://bigislandnow.com/

The front page is littered with great updates - here is today’s page:

http://bigislandnow.com/2018/05/23/may-23-activity-update-five-fissures-continue-robust-activity/