Visit at Keck Observatory – almost the end

Last evening & last sunset on the beach of Hawaii.

Hello,

I am still at Keck Observatory, but I am packing my stuff since I am about to leave Big Island for San Francisco, California. It was a rewarding experience to be at Keck Observatory HQ and I am very grateful to Peter Wizinovich, Optical System Manager and Taft Amandroff , the director of the observatory for inviting me. Keck Observatory is a wonderful place to meet people and I had stimulating discussions about future instruments for ground-based astronomy. I am leaving Big Island the head full of new projects and ideas and I hope to able to conduct them in the future (the reality of funding could be an issue here :-))

 I finally had the opportunity to visit the island during my three weeks stay and meet people who were born and/or live in Hawaii for a long time. I also went to Hilo and gave a talk over there about my research at the Gemini Hilo center. I do encourage those interesting in astronomy in general to take the time to visit the Mauna Kea, but also the Headquarters of the observatories, you will have a flavor of the astronomer life.

Hawaii is definitely one of the best places to do astronomy and we should definitely be thankful to the Hawaiian community for letting us use the sacred mountain of Mauna Kea to conduct our research. We had a talk at the Keck Observatory about Hawaiian culture and the importance of Mauna Kea. It made me realize that we are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain; without the generous hospitality of the Hawaiian people, none of this would be possible. Thanks! 

I am attaching a few more pictures that I took at Big Island at the end of this post.

Soon back to California!

Franck M.

Ocean, volcanoes, snow, astronomy all together. The perfect mix!

Typical landscape from the Big Island. The shield volcanoes...

The lobby of the Keck Observatory HQ at Waimea. Notice the hexagonal shape of the windows 🙂

This is the last slide of my 50 min talk... A summary

Waiting for the audience before giving my talk at Keck Observatory

In front of the Gemini HQ at Hilo. notice the flags of all the partner countries