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Cosmic Matters
NASA Selects Groups to Guide ‘Habitable Worlds Observatory’ Activities, Invites Community Participation
NASA has selected 56 individuals to participate in groups that will guide maturation activities for the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO). HWO is a concept for a NASA flagship mission, as recommended by the 2020 Astrophysics Decadal Survey, that would pursue a breadth of astrophysics goals, including searching for and characterizing potentially habitable planets beyond our […]
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W. M. Keck Observatory Achieves First Light with Keck Cosmic Reionization Mapper
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – W. M. Keck Observatory is pleased to announce its newest instrument, the Keck Cosmic Reionization Mapper (KCRM), has successfully achieved “first light,” marking its first time ‘seeing’ the universe from Maunakea on Hawaiʻi Island. On Sunday, June 4, KCRM team members from Keck Observatory and Caltech captured a first-light image of the […]
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W. M. Keck Observatory Launches Electrician Apprenticeship Program for Hawaiʻi Community College Students
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi Island — W. M. Keck Observatory in collaboration with Hawaiʻi Community College is excited to announce a new apprenticeship program for kamaʻāina students pursuing a career as licensed electricians. The three-year pilot program provides highly specialized technical training and commercial work experience to students enrolled in Hawaiʻi Community College’s Electrical Installation and Maintenance […]
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NASA Releases New JWST and W. M. Keck Observatory Images of Titan, Saturn’s Moon
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – From space with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and on the ground with the W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaiʻi Island, astronomers have tag-teamed to capture a set of extraordinary images revealing large clouds in the northern hemisphere of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. “Detecting clouds is exciting because it validates […]
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W. M. Keck Observatory Achieves First Light with Keck Planet Finder
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – A new planet-hunting instrument at W. M. Keck Observatory has achieved “first light,” capturing its first data from the sky and marking an exciting chapter in the search for Earth-sized planets around other stars, which are extraordinarily difficult to detect due to their small size. Operating on the Keck I Telescope on […]
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W. M. Keck Observatory’s Chief of Technical Development Peter Wizinowich Wins 2022 Joseph Weber Award
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – Congratulations to Dr. Peter Wizinowich, chief of technical development at W. M. Keck Observatory, who has been awarded the 2022 American Astronomical Society (AAS) Joseph Weber Award for Astronomical Instrumentation. In an announcement made today, the AAS named recipients of its 2022 prizes for outstanding achievements in research and education and recognized […]
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Lānaʻi High School Students Win Telescope Time on Maunakea, Haleakalā
An inaugural cohort of Maunakea Scholars at Lānaʻi High School have won highly competitive, professional observing time at some of Hawaiʻi’s leading telescopes, including W. M. Keck Observatory. During an awards ceremony on Tuesday, April 26, the Maunakea Observatories announced the winning proposals from three students. The Lānaʻi high schoolers were rewarded for their research […]
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W. M. Keck Observatory Achieves First Light with LRIS Upgrade
Maunakea, Hawaii – W. M. Keck Observatory’s science community is celebrating the successful revitalization of the Low Resolution Imaging Spectrometer, or LRIS – one of the Observatory’s acclaimed instruments used in Nobel Prize-winning research. The instrument team tasked with the LRIS rescue mission has completed a 2-night engineering run; within hours of the first night […]
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UH Astronomers and Maunakea Observatories to Help Map the Universe’s First Galaxies
Maunakea, Hawaii – University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy (IfA) astronomers will play an instrumental role in helping unveil the universe’s very first galaxies, more than 13 billion light years away. This week, NASA announced the first suite of science programs for its groundbreaking James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), set to launch in October 2021. The IfA researchers are part of the “COSMOS-Webb” project, which […]
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Discovery of a Single Fast Radio Burst’s Home Galaxy Wins Prestigious Award
W. M. Keck Observatory Astronomers Among the Authors Awarded the 2020 AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize Maunakea, Hawaii – A historic feat in successfully zeroing in on the precise location of a non-repeating fast radio burst has earned the highest recognition from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The international team that made […]
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