We came up to the summit of Mauna Kea today to do a practice run of the Venus observations. We started at 7 am, but the geometry of Venus and the Sun was such that sunlight came dangerously close to the telescope – the video clip above was filmed at this time! Happily, by shortly after 8 am, the azimuthal (horizontal) separation of Venus from the Sun was sufficiently large to allow Venus observation without having sunlight fall on the telescope. We used the rest of the day to iron out some other problems: getting the telescope control computer to recognise where Venus was in the sky; getting the spectrograph to record a signal without saturating (overloading) the detectors. We then follow Venus through the day, keeping a watch on sunlight entering the dome. At 1 pm, we have to stop: it becomes impossible to observe Venus without having some sunlight fall dangerously close to the telescope. We return down the mountain to the astronomer’s mid-level facility at 2800 m, called ”Hale Pohaku”. The air down here at 2800 m feels delightfully warm and rich in oxygen after our time at the summit! It has been a wearing first day – several of us were feeling quite rough during our first long day at the summit, and we enjoy a welcome rest. Tomorrow we will start science acquisitions in earnest.