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First day jitters are over and the shows are on air!!! Because the first show is always in the dark, we get to operate totally under lights. The problem with lighting Lava is that it does not reflect anything. The first show usually has an eerie look to it. The lava flowing nearby gives a reddish glow to the night sky as it reflects off the steam clouds. The helicopter is equipped with an infrared camera and this produces a great image to the big screens of the actual location of the lava flows. (We can see what we have been walking on that makes melted soles on our shoes). The view has a different meaning to us here in Jasonville II, it shows us exactly how close we are to Jasonville III!!!!
Reiner Doetzkies
Ten shows completed to date, and the programming to PIN sites is arriving just fine. The Jason Argonauts are around and enjoying themselves being on location.
A typical day here starts at 2:30 am. We wake up , pile into the van and head down the Volcano. The commute lasts about 30 minutes. It starts at the Volcano at 4000 feet. We start off by driving around the crater rim. This is interesting because one side of the rim is covered with lots of vegetation, and the other is rather barren, only a few sickly trees. The crater is deep and it still steams and occasionally smells bad because of the sulfur. We also have to keep a look out for the Ne' Ne birds which are the state bird. They are flightless and endangered , and we think that they wander onto the road just to stop tourist. Next we turn down a long road that winds for 21 miles down the volcano side. During the ride down we pass areas of vegetation and large dark lava fields which are labeled by the year they were formed. When we get close to sea level and approach Jasonville we can see the active lava flows on the mountain side. We stop when we get to the on duty park ranger. The ranger gives us a brief status of the flow condition, and then we turn our van around and park of the shoulder of the road facing the vehicle in the evacuation direction.
Once parked and onsite we walk to our broadcast vehicles, which can sometimes be up to a quarter mile away, and we are still awe struck by the beauty that surrounds us. If the sky is clear, the number of visible stars are just unbelievable and because we arrive before the tourist , the sound of the ocean surf can be heard pounding against the shore.
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Gene Carl
Feldman
(gene@seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov)
(301) 286-9428
Todd Carlo Viola,
JASON Foundation for Education
(todd@jason.org)