Mercury Transit Viewing

Check out planet Mercury pass across the Sun! W. M. Keck Observatory invites the community to its Mercury Transit Viewing at its headquarters in Waimea. We’ll start the morning showing a live feed of the beginning of the transit in the Jerry Nelson Conference Room. When the Sun comes over North Hawaii Community Hospital, come […]

Waimea Solar System Walk

W. M. Keck Observatory, in partnership with Canada France Hawaii Telescope Corporation (CFHT), University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, and Waimea Public Library present: Waimea Solar System Walk 2019 Bring your ohana to this family-friendly event for an interstellar journey right in Waimea town. Start at W. M. Keck Observatory’s Headquarters, walk through a scale […]

The Past, Present, and Future of Space Telescopes

GUEST SPEAKER: J. Christopher Howk, Professor of Physics, University of Notre Dame ASTRONOMY TALK | Maunakea Observatories are among the most powerful ground-based telescopes in the world.  They become even more powerful when combined with the use of telescopes in space, allowing astronomers to explore the extremes of the universe.  As the best-known space observatory […]

In Search of the Ultimate Ruler: The Grand Challenge of Distances in Astronomy

GUEST SPEAKER: John O’Meara, W. M. Keck Observatory Chief Scientist ASTRONOMY TALK | Even with the most powerful telescopes and instrumentation, astronomy faces a fundamental problem: the ability to determine the distance to objects in the cosmos.  From the solar system to the cosmic microwave background, the history of astronomy is intertwined with the hunt […]

PŌWEHI Hawaii and the Event Horizon Telescope

GUEST SPEAKERS: Astronomers Geoffrey Bower, Jessica Dempsey, and Doug Simons and Larry Kimura from the College of Hawaiian Language, University of Hawai`i Hilo ASTRONOMY TALK | Join us to talk story about the groundbreaking results from the Event Horizon Telescope and the pioneering role the Maunakea Observatories played in this nearly-impossible experiment.  We will also […]

A Primitive Planetesimal in the Kuiper Belt Explored by New Horizons

GUEST SPEAKER: Will Grundy, Astronomer, Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona ASTRONOMY TALK | NASA’s New Horizons mission broke records on New Year’s Day 2019 after encountering the most distant object in our solar system ever explored by a spacecraft – a small Kuiper Belt object named 486958 2014 MU69, also known as Ultima Thule. The peanut-shaped […]

Exploring Planets Orbiting Nearby Stars

GUEST SPEAKER: Courtney Dressing, UC Berkeley Assistant Professor of Astronomy ASTRONOMY TALK | The NASA Kepler mission revealed that our Galaxy is teeming with planetary systems and that Earth-sized planets are common, but most of the planets Kepler detected orbit stars that are too faint to permit detailed study. Excitingly, the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey […]

Where Did We Come From: A Tale About Galaxies Far, Far Away

GUEST SPEAKER: Marusa Bradac, UC Davis Associate Physics Professor ASTRONOMY TALK | One of the greatest accomplishments in recent astrophysics is the creation of a model for the history of the universe. The newborn universe was a dark place until the very first galaxies lit it up. Travel at the speed of light to journey back in […]

Universe in Reverse, the Keck Time Machines

GUEST SPEAKER: Matt Malkan, UCLA Professor of Astronomy ASTRONOMY TALK | What’s new in the young universe? Shortly after the Big Bang, our universe has been measured to have been almost amazingly uniform. Fortunately for our existence, it didn’t stay that way long. The excess gravity of slightly over-dense regions slowed their expansion and eventually caused […]

Dark Energy and the Runaway Universe

GUEST SPEAKER: Alex Filippenko, Professor of Astronomy at University of California, Berkeley; Richard & Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor in the Physical Sciences; Miller Senior Fellow in the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science ASTRONOMY TALK | We expected the attractive force of gravity to slow down the rate at which the universe is expanding. However, […]