Astronomical artist Jon Lomberg's home hosts the famous Galaxy Garden, a huge complex of plants that plots out the shape and structure of the Milky Way Galaxy, down to flowers representing areas of spiral arms and earrings stuck in specific leaves marking the Sun and the brightest stars in our sky. Photo credit: David J. Eicher
On Thursday, our first of two overlapping
Astronomy tour groups departed for their homes. Now, our second group of just under 50 intrepid travelers experienced what the first had a few days before, a series of talks by University of California, Berkeley, astronomer Alex Filippenko and me on several topics. I spoke first about astronomy’s new frontier — new and unusual research results in astronomy, planetary science, and cosmology. I then spoke about meteorites and meteorite collecting and showed a number of examples from my collection. These included the ordinary (Canyon Diablo, from the Arizona Meteor Crater fall) to the beautiful (Esquel, the pallasite with remarkable inclusions of the mineral forsterite), and lunar (Dar al Gani 400) and martian (Zagami) meteorites. The group was very happy to talk about rocks from space.
Alex then spoke about the Keck Telescopes on the summit of Mauna Kea, which the group will travel to see today. He covered his own research and that of many others, describing areas such as dark energy (Alex is one of its discoverers), black holes, extrasolar planets, and other allied topics such as adaptive optics, which is used on the 10-meter Kecks. Alex and I then fielded questions during a lunchtime reception, and we had many wonderful and quite complex ideas come forth from the knowledgeable audience.
I then departed with a number of people to visit astronomical artist Jon Lomberg, who lives on the island. I had known about Jon since I was a teenager, and maybe we had some correspondence long ago, but I had never met him until now. So it was a great treat. Jon was, among other things, the principal animator on Carl Sagan’s TV series
Cosmos, which was a huge inspiration to me many years ago. In fact, I had contacted Carl and gotten to know him; now, many years later, the man who produced those beautiful sequences like the Dandelion Spaceship was a delight.
During our dinner cruise, we visited Kealakekua Bay, witnessing the site where Captain James Cook was killed by Hawaiians following a series of quarrels February 14, 1779, imaged June 7, 2012.
Several years ago, Jon created a magnificent area of plants and foliage on his estate. Called the Galaxy Garden, the spiral-shaped assemblage is huge and uses a vast array of trees, flowing plants, and bushes to re-create the structure of the Milky Way Galaxy, down to specific arms, a galactic center black hole fountain, and even a specific leaf with earring posts set in to mark the positions of the Sun and bright stars in our sky. It’s an astounding and magical thing, and walking through it, visitors really get an amazing and accurate sense of the scale of our galaxy.
The day finished with a dinner cruise that departed from Kona and traversed the coast. We had visitors this time in the form of many dolphins alongside the ship and a young manta ray, all of whom seemed to delight at showing off for the passengers. We once again visited Kealakekua Bay, where in February 1779 the famous explorer Captain James Cook met his fate, killed by Hawaiians after a series of quarrels. It is such a beautiful and tranquil place to see where such a famous and violent scene once occurred.
Today, Alex and I will finish our trip by leading group two once again up Mauna Kea to the Kecks. Stay tuned.
And be sure to check out all the images from this trip at www.Astronomy.com/transit.