[X] My Assistant

[stewjack]

The National Public Radio Show Science Friday provided this gem!

Science Friday Web Site

SciFri Video [ 24 MB ] [ mp4 ]
Welcome to the Hotel Mauna Kea

Five planetary astronomers bring you an original science music video about life at the observatory at the 14,000-foot summit of Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii. The astronomers, stationed at the Infra-Red Telescope Facility, wrote the song while they investigated aurora in Jupiter's atmosphere and the composition of Mars' atmosphere.

They must have had a LOT of free time.

Jack

[stewjack]

The Bleach?

I understood the story-line of most of that video, but can someone explain the significance of the plastic jug of Clorox bleach?

Jack

[Russ]

Most astronomers use facility instruments, but we take our own spectrometer to Hawaii. Our instrument, HIPWAC, is like a radio receiver for the infrared, and we use CO2 lasers as our local oscillators. Clorox was used on one of the tubes to clean out some goo that had accumulated in the part of the tube that coolant is run through. Some Clorox managed to seep out and make its way to a window on the end of the tube where the laser light comes out, even though the window was covered, and damaging a window could ruin a laser. However, the laser ended up performing just as well if not better, and so someone wrote "HIPWAC Laser Enhancer" on the Clorox bottle, and we still call that particular laser tube the "Clorox laser".

The Bleach?

I understood the story-line of most of that video, but can someone explain the significance of the plastic jug of Clorox bleach?

Jack

[stewjack]

someone wrote "HIPWAC Laser Enhancer" on the Clorox bottle, and we still call that particular laser tube the "Clorox laser".

Ah Ha! It was an inside joke. That's why the large number of astronomical types on this board
had nothing to say. I was beginning to wonder.

I may have used a poor choice of words to suggest that the video required a lot of time and effort.
"They must have had a LOT of free time." seemed like a witty backhanded compliment
when I typed it. I was trying to suggest that it wasn't your average U-tube video.

Jack