Uncle Yuichi: Something's moving up there? Hmm... I don't see anything. It was probably a satelite. Punpun (with gums flapping): Could I have discovered a new planet?!(long pause) Yuichi: Yes! This could be a great discovery! If it really is a new planet... It'll be called Planet PunPun! Punpun (slobbering again): Do you think I'll win the Nobel Prise?! Yuichi: You sure are a greedy kid.
At the age of 45, most days in Tucson were spent feeling like I was on the summit of Mauna Kea, as I was exhibiting debilitating health symptoms that corresponded to what I saw at very high altitude. I was later to find that I had erratic low blood oxygen levels after almost a decade of high altitude work.
Snow cleaning of the world's largest telescope mirrors was an impressive sight. The optics technicians would climb into a huge telescopic boom lift and spray immense clouds of cold carbon dioxide snow and gas onto the ten meter diameter mirrors high above the floor indoors. It would cause some of the accumulated dirt to magically fall off, leaving it less dirty.
The future of the next generation relies on astronomers obtaining a full understanding ofthe rapidly changing human environmental conditions and the halting of biologically toxic corporategovernment policies. The overloading of the electromagnetic environment is one of these disastrouspolicies that must stop.
Light and the human is poorly understood by the astronomicalprofession, with many astronomers not understanding which light bulbs they should have in their ownhomes and offices! It is embarrassing that astronomers do not understand the many forms of artificiallighting that they are exposed to every day and how it affects them.
But I will confess that I began as an astronomer—a liking for bright flashes, vast distances, unreachable things, a hand stretched always toward the furthest limit— and that my longing for you has not taken me very far from that original desire to inscribe a comet’s orbit around the walls of our city, to gently stroke the surface of the stars.
It is a sad state of affairs that I donot know of any astronomer who fully understands the energy in their own daily environment. Untilthat changes, Dark Energy will always be a mystery to the astronomical community.
I read not so long ago about the construction of a large telescope in Chile's Atacama Desert, where rainfall can average a millimetre a year and the air is fifty times as dry as the air in Death Valley. Needless to say, skies over the Atacama are pristine. The pilgrim astronomer ventures to the earth’s ravaged reaches in order to peer more keenly at other worlds, and I suppose the novelist is up to something similar.
In high altitude astronomical facilities we routinely discharged large amounts of nitrogen gas into closed spaces. We were never informed by the astronomy management team about the abnormally low oxygen environments that the use of liquid nitrogen creates, how long term exposure to it manifests itself in human health and the resulting abnormal mental behaviors.
When I worked in high altitude astronomy, the worst sickness that I experienced was not at the 13,796 feet very high altitude summit of Mauna Kea Observatory (MKO) in Hawaii, it was at Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) in Arizona at the much lower altitude of 6,875 feet. Due to my very high altitude experiences, I knew that this strange sickness was not primarily caused by altitude sickness and was most likely Sick Building Syndrome (SBS). After reporting various behavioral problems in all of the staff to the management team, my contract was not renewed, I was unable to legally protect the health and safety of the workers that I was responsible for, troubleshooting of this environmental problem stopped and I left in a sickened state for my next position before I could find the root cause.
When the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) found out that Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) were going to visit the site to assist in bringing it into legal compliance, they freaked out! They insisted that the visit had to be canceled and the result was that I eventually became so sick from the toxic workplace environment that I had no option but to leave.
What caused me to undertake the catalog was the nebula I discovered above the southern horn of Taurus on September 12, 1758, while observing the comet of that year. ... This nebula had such a resemblance to a comet in its form and brightness that I endeavored to find others, so that astronomers would not confuse these same nebulae with comets just beginning to shine. I observed further with suitable refractors for the discovery of comets, and this is the purpose I had in mind in compiling the catalog.After me, the celebrated Herschel published a catalog of 2000 which he has observed. This unveiling the sky, made with instruments of great aperture, does not help in the perusal of the sky for faint comets. Thus my object is different from his, and I need only nebulae visible in a telescope of two feet [focal length].
A few years after working on Mauna Kea, I discovered that I had radiation sickness
Oxygen deprivation and supplemental oxygen are both bio-hazards for Mauna Kea workers