Australia Telescope National Facility

Techs in Paradise, Hawai`i 2004 (Internet2 Joint-Techs and APAN)

Images from Techs in Paradise, 2004

From the 23 January until 1 February, I had the opportunity to attend both the Internet2 Joint-Technical meeting and the Asia-Pacific Advanced Network meeting held at the University of Hawai`i (UH) Manoa campus as a guest of the Australian Academic and Research Network (AARNet).

A small group, consisting of George McLaughlin (AARNet), Mark Prior (AARNet), David Lassner (UH Information Technology Services) and Pui-Hin Rhoads (UH Institute for Astronomy) and myself, were able to visit the Big Island and take a trip to the summit of Mauna Kea where some of the world's largest optical telescopes are located. For those of us with an Astronomy background, it was like being in "Astronomy Heaven"! As you will see, even in Hawai`i, it does snow in winter making the journey a somewhat surreal experience. Further information on the telescopes on Mauna Kea and their research programmes is available from the Institute of Astronomy, University of Hawai`i.

Later in the week, we were able to tour the Tyco Dependable, a cable laying and repair ship, currently berthed in Honolulu harbour. For those of us interested in the laying and repair of undersea fibre optic cables, this was extremely interesting.

Most of the images were shot on Kodak Professional E100GX or E100G transparency film rated at a speed of 100 ISO. The E100GX exhibits a warmer colour balance than the E100G which has a neutral balance. Much of the on-board ship photography was shot on Kodak Professional Portra 400UC (Ultracolour) colour negative film rated at a speed of 400 ISO. The extra film speed being necessary to undertake ambient light photography within the ship. The camera used was a Canon EOS-1v with either a 24-70mm f/2.8L or a 70-200mm f/2.8L (image stabilised) zoom lens. The processing and scanning was done at Vision Graphics in the Sydney suburb of Redfern.

A selection of 32 of the better images, with captions, are available here.

For those of you with time on your hands, the full set of images (without captions) are also available via this link.