News
News
Making the Nearly Invisible, Visible: Astronomers Trace the Gas that Breathes Life into Galaxies
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi— Astronomers have developed a groundbreaking new method of seeing the massive, but barely visible gas tanks that fuel star formation. With this innovative technique, the researchers have created the first ever spatial maps of the enormous, translucent gas clouds that birth galaxies, shedding new light on galactic evolution and star formation in the […]
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“Black Widow” Star Devours Its Rapidly Circling Companion
Finding Represents the Shortest-period Black Widow Binary Found to Date Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – In black widow star systems, a rapidly spinning dead star, called a pulsar, blasts its lower-mass orbiting companion with radiation, slowly evaporating it. Like their namesake spiders, the pulsars take advantage of their companions before destroying them, in this case by harnessing […]
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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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Director’s Message: Maunakea’s Future
Aloha, I would like to share W. M. Keck Observatory’s engagement around HB2024, a bill that proposes a new governance and management structure for Maunakea. We seek a model that upholds our core principles*, most importantly the inclusion of the native Hawaiian community in decision-making. This is consistent with our commitment to a Community Astronomy […]
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Astronomers Discover Widest Separation of Brown Dwarf Pair to Date
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – A team of astronomers has discovered a rare pair of brown dwarfs that has the widest separation of any brown dwarf binary system found to date. “Because of their small size, brown dwarf binary systems are usually very close together,” said Emma Softich, an undergraduate astrophysics student at the Arizona State University […]
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Surprisingly High Fraction of Dead Galaxies Found in Ancient Galactic City
Why Cluster’s Galaxies are Unlike Those in All the Other Known Protoclusters is a Mystery, says UC Riverside-led Team Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – An international team of astronomers led by researchers at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), has discovered a massive cluster of young galaxies forming in the early universe. With the help of W. […]
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Saturn’s High-altitude Winds Generate Extraordinary Aurorae, Study Finds
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – Space scientists have discovered a never-before-seen mechanism fueling huge planetary aurorae at Saturn. A University of Leicester-led team has found that Saturn is unique among planets observed to date in that some of its aurorae are generated by swirling winds within its own atmosphere, and not just from the planet’s surrounding magnetosphere. […]
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Puffy Planets Lose Atmospheres, Become Super-Earths
Finding Represents First Detections of Atmospheric Loss in “Mini-Neptunes” Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – Astronomers have identified two different cases of “mini-Neptune” planets that are losing their puffy atmospheres and likely transforming into super-Earths. Radiation from the planets’ stars is stripping away their atmospheres, driving hot gas to escape like steam from a pot of boiling water. […]
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Newly-Found Planets On The Edge Of Destruction
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – Three newly-discovered planets have been orbiting dangerously close to stars nearing the end of their lives. Out of the thousands of extrasolar planets found so far, these three gas giant planets first detected by the NASA TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) Mission, have some of the shortest-period orbits around subgiant or giant […]
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Astronomers Witness a Dying Star Reach Its Explosive End
Two Hawai’i Telescopes Capture a Massive Star Moments Before Going Supernova Haleakalā and Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – For the very first time, astronomers have imaged in real time the dramatic end to a red supergiant’s life, watching the massive star’s rapid self-destruction and final death throes before it collapsed into a Type II supernova. Using two […]
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