Following years of delays, a new telescope was lowered in pieces into its new home on the summit of Mauna Kea yesterday. Hoku Kea, the research telescope that will be operated by the University of Hawaii-Hilo, was taken to the summit last week, but high winds and a balky dome enclosure prevented installation until yesterday. Work continues today, and testing will continue for another month. Read more
Mauna Kea's newest, smallest telescope should reach the summit today. A flatbed truck carrying Hoku Kea was scheduled to leave Hilo early this morning for the three-hour trip to the site of the former University of Hawaii-Hilo 24-inch telescope. Read more
Hilo received a National Science Foundation grant to fund major research instrumentation for the Hoku Kea Telescope atop Mauna Kea. Funded through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009, the award totals $141,664 over a three-year period. Read more
Do you ever wonder what is visible through the telescopes on Mauna Kea? Community members will have the opportunity to view what a telescope sees because a replacement University of Hawaii telescope will send images to the UH-Hilo campus, where it will be remotely operated. The new telescope, named Hoku Ke' a, will be installed in mid-February in the same location atop Mauna Kea as the old telescope. Read more
The University of Hawaii 2.2-meter telescope is located near the summit of Mauna Kea, on the Island of Hawaii. The 2.2-meter telescope was the first large telescope constructed on Mauna Kea. It went into operation in 1970, and its early successes showed the excellent image quality and observing conditions at the top of Mauna Kea.
While celebrating the orbiting telescope's spectacular images after a recent upgrade by shuttle astronauts, the IFA infrared sensor technology group got more good news -- a National Science Foundation grant of nearly $7 million to develop a more advanced 16-megapixel infrared sensor. Infrared sensors scan the skies for heat or infrared light rather than visible light because many celestial objects are invisible except for the heat they give off. Read more