A house made of LEGOs

MovotoBlog has a calculator to let you determine how many Lego bricks it would take to build your own home. 

It's not the millions of bricks and the time it would take to assemble them so much as it is the $1 million it would cost to buy them.  Maybe we should use Duplo(tm) blocks.

Hawaiian Observatories on Mauna Kea from the plane

These are my two best shots of the observatories on Mauna Kea from the plane.  
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I especially like the second one because we were in position to have Mauna Loa in the background.

We didn't get to climb either one, and really only got glimpses of either through the clouds except on our last day when it was very clear.

Monk Seal and Green Turtle at Black Sand beach in Hawaii

These two endangered creatures were sunning themselves on the black sand beach on the big island of Hawaii.

We kept a safe distance but the telephoto lens on my iPhone let me get these close ups.  

Halemaʻumaʻu Vent in the crater of Kīlauea Volcano

Halemaʻumaʻu Vent in the crater of Kīlauea Volcano during the day.  the caldera is huge.  

We were pretty much just inside the rim of a volcano.    We also got pictures at night where the glow of the lava deep in the vent illuminated the vented cloud above.

Captain Cook in Hawaii

Captain Cook performed the first Christian ceremony on the Hawaiian islands, a funeral service for a crew member.

Later he was killed across the bay in an altercation with the native Hawaiians. The monument placed a hundred years later marks the location.  It's only reachable by a strenuous hike or by boat.

In our travels we have followed Captain Cook across the Pacific to Easter Island and to Hawaii.

Transit of Venus from beginning to end

All of the pictures I took of the transit of Venus viewing it the Solarscope.  I got pictures from first contact through total ingress and more than halfway across the sun.  We started at the Keck Obsevatory Headquaters  in Waimea, and ended at our hotel in Keauhou.

Final egress, Venus leaving the surface of the sun was obscured by clouds.

At least it made a beautiful sunset.

We even made the newspaper on the Big Island, the West Hawaii Today
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http://www.westhawaiitoday.com/sections/news/local-news/sliding-across-sun.html

Transit of Venus viewing at the Keck Observatory Headquarters

The Solarscope is a hit with the many visitors to the Keck Headquarters.  I am glad I brought it all the way from Delaware.

The first shot is Venus still coming onto the sun.

The second shot is Venus all the way on the sun.

Partial Lunar Eclipse from the Big Island of Hawai'i

Not a great picture of the partial lunar eclipse last night.  I don't have a camera clever enough to let me take good photos of the moon, but you can see the shadow of the Earth "bite" out of the moon's lower part.  I guess the picture let's me know I was there.  This was at 1am Hawaii time.  Delaware folks probably missed it because the sun had set already.

The last two pictures were taken with the iPhone through binoculars.

National Geodetic Survey Marker - Honolulu

 My iPhone is on the dot and accurate to the official marker at the Waikiki Aquarium.