32 Sunday, December The 24, 2017 telescope whisperer John White’s job: To keep Gemini’s sophisticated instruments working To get the best pictures Cheers to 50 years of Exploring the Universe! Happy Anniversary UH Institute of Astronomy Proudly serving Hilo for over 60 years Maguire Bearing Co., LTD. 855 Iolani Street, Hilo 96720 Phone: 808-961-5867 Fax: 808-961-5052 of the universe, observatories need a large “light bucket,” as astronomers sometimes call their primary mirrors, to collect as many photons as possible. But they also need sophisticated instruments to take the images and collect data so they can really understand what’s going on billions of light-years away. That’s where people like John White come in. The 58-year-old Hilo resident is the senior instrument engineer for the Gemini Observatory atop Maunakea. His job is to be a troubleshooter of sorts. It’s up to him to ensure the instruments work as they should when they’re needed so that a night of observing doesn’t go to waste. That requires him to work not just with electronics, but also the cryogenics that chill the instruments to keep out interference. “Whenever you find a solution to a problem, that’s always a really great feeling,” said White, who has worked for telescopes on Maunakea for 28 years. It’s a job he said he still finds rewarding and challenging to this day. But he almost fell into it by accident. White, who was born in Honokaa and raised in Waimea, said he initially wanted to be an architect. Noticing that computers were making drafting obsolete, he studied business in college instead. Then he graduated and a recession hit. Nobody was hiring, he said. White came back to Hawaii Island, where he enrolled at Hawaii Community College in Hilo to study electronics. At the time, he didn’t know anything about it. But he figured that would give him a foothold in another career. He expected to return to the mainland in search for work. But then White landed a part-time job as an electrician for the Joint Astronomy Centre where he found a mentor who taught him things he was told not to worry about only a few months before in college. “He was using a piece of equipment called a logic analyzer,” he said. “… This is one of the things with electronics class we were told don’t bother, you won’t see it.” That sparked his interest, and he has been at it ever since. “Electronics here in Hawaii is limited to a few things,” White said, noting he feels lucky to have a career here. And a lot has changed during the past three decades. He recalls using floppy disks to store data when he first started. Now, he can use a webcam in the control room in Hilo to solve problems with workers on the summit, something Gemini introduced almost from the start in 1999. Working with astronomers might not be the most important job in the world, he said, but it does help give him a different perspective. “If it has taught me anything, it’s how incredibly huge the universe is,” White said. “The distances are unimaginable, simply unimaginable. And to think that we are on a little tiny blue marble, as someone once said, amongst tens of billions of marbles, bright marbles, with maybe marbles around it. And there is nothing out there that we know of that comes close to the life here on Earth.” For those interested in a similar field, he advised them to keep an open mind. “You never know what door will open,” White said. “You never know what opportunity will pop up. If it’s interesting and it interests you, then you should pursue it.” By TOM CALLIS Hawaii Tribune-Herald HOLLYN JOHNSON/Tribune-Herald John White of Gemini Observatory. Hawaii Tribune-Herald
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