Maunakea

Caltech has already removed the Leighton Telescope out of its observatory and off the mountain. Work will resume in the spring, weather permitting.

Keck Observatory on Hawaiʻi Island recently named Rich Matsuda as its next director. The self-proclaimed local boy spoke with The Conversation's Russell Subiono about dispelling the science versus culture mindset and building relationships with the community.

Maunakea, especially its summit, is sacred to Native Hawaiians as it contains ceremonial platforms, ancestral burial sites and an alpine lake believed to possess healing powers. But over the last 50 years, the summit has been used by astronomers to study the skies.

The permit allowing the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope on Maunakea is under review by the Board of Land and Natural Resources. At issue is whether the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo met a condition that required TMT construction to begin within two years of the permit being granted. HPR’s Kuʻuwehi Hiraishi has more.

It's been a year since the Maunakea Stewardship and Oversight Authority was created by Act 255, which transfers responsibility for the Big Island volcano from the University of Hawaiʻi to the panel in five years. But there's a separate university advisory panel of Maunakea raising concerns about co-managing the mountain while the new governing board starts.

A Molokaʻi High School alumna has co-authored a recently published astronomy paper. She captured the first look at magnetic fields within the iconic and beautiful Horsehead Nebula, with data she gathered in 2018. Catherine Cluett Pactol from The Molokai Dispatch explains.

A new discovery out of UCLA's Galactic Center Orbits Initiative found that stars that were once believed to come in pairs actually merge together due to a supermassive black hole. Devin Chu, a Hilo-born astronomer led a 10-year survey of young stars near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy using the Keck Observatory on Maunakea.

The recent observation of a sun-like star gulping an orbiting planet involved multiple telescopes including the Keck Observatory on Maunakea. The Conversation spoke to John O’Meara, chief scientist of the observatory, to learn about this powerful star and its appetite for other planets.

For the first time in Hawaiʻi's 50-year history with astronomy, observatories will be removed from Maunakea. First up is the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory. Most of the instruments have already been removed, but the telescope's 34-foot diameter primary mirror remains. The Conversation's Russell Subiono has more.

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