News
News
Astronomers Measure Enormous Planet Lurking Far From Its Star
Gas Giant Takes 218 Days to Complete its Orbit Maunakea, Hawaii – Scientists aren’t usually able to measure the size of gigantic planets, like Jupiter or Saturn, which are far from the stars they orbit. But a UC Riverside-led team has done it. The planet is roughly five times heavier than Jupiter, hence its nickname […]
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A Tale of Planetary Resurrection
Years after its detection, astronomers have learned that a planet called KOI-5Ab orbits in a triple-star system with a skewed configuration. Maunakea, Hawaii – Shortly after NASA’s Kepler mission began operations back in 2009, it identified what was thought to be a planet about the size of Neptune. Called KOI-5Ab, the planet, which was the second […]
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A Rocky Planet Around One of Our Galaxy’s Oldest Stars
University of Hawaiʻi Astronomers Using W. M. Keck Observatory Discover Ancient Magma World Orbiting a Chemically Unusual Star Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – “They should have sent a poet,” says Ellie Arroway in the film Contact as, suspended in outer space, she gazes upon a spiral galaxy. Almost all of the planets discovered to date (including the […]
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Beyond the Impossible
Maunakea, Hawaii – W. M. Keck Observatory presents its new film, “Beyond the Impossible,” which made its public debut on December 17, 2020, with over 300 people in attendance for the virtual screening. The documentary picks up the story after the twin Keck I and Keck II telescopes achieved first light and chronicles the exciting […]
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Astronomers Spot Farthest Galaxy Known in the Universe
Maunakea, Hawaii – An international team of astronomers using W. M. Keck Observatory have spectroscopic confirmation of the most distant astrophysical object known to date. The researchers, led by Professor Linhua Jiang at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University, obtained near-infrared spectra with the Multi-Object Spectrograph for Infrared Exploration (MOSFIRE) on […]
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Direct Image of Newly-discovered Brown Dwarf Captured
Maunakea, Hawaii – Astronomers using two Maunakea Observatories – Subaru Telescope and W. M. Keck Observatory – have discovered a key benchmark brown dwarf orbiting a Sun-like star just 86 light-years from Earth that provides a key reference point for understanding the properties of the first directly-imaged exoplanets. Subaru Telescope first detected and captured remarkably […]
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W. M. Keck Observatory and REC Solar Announce Completion of Major Sustainability Project in Hawaii
Maunakea, Hawaii– In its commitment to reduce the organization’s carbon footprint and lower the cost of energy, W. M. Keck Observatory and Duke Energy’s REC Solar are pleased to announce the completion and operation of a solar project atop Maunakea on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi. The solar photovoltaic (PV) system is on the rooftop […]
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Adaptive Optics: Providing Clarity to Observations
Maunakea, Hawaii – Dr. Peter Wizinowich, based at W. M. Keck Observatory on Hawaii Island, is an engineer who specializes in optical sciences in astrophysics. His work involves using adaptive optics to improve the imaging capabilities of some of the world’s largest telescopes. In 1608, Dutch eyeglass maker Hans Lippershey patented the world’s first telescope […]
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16-year-old Cosmic Mystery Solved, Revealing Stellar Missing Link
The Blue Ring Nebula, which perplexed scientists for over a decade, appears to be the youngest known example of two stars merged into one Maunakea, Hawaii – In 2004, scientists with NASA’s space-based Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) spotted an object unlike any they’d seen before in our Milky Way galaxy: a large, faint blob of […]
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Unexplained Brightness from Colossal Explosion
Maunakea, Hawaii – Astronomers have discovered the brightest infrared light from a short gamma-ray burst ever seen, with a bizarre glow that is more luminous than previously thought was possible. Its half-second flash of light, detected in May of this year, came from a violent explosion of gamma rays billons of light-years away that unleashed […]
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