Latest Mauna Kea Stories

PAAUILO, Hawaii, May 9, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Hawaiian Legacy Hardwoods (HLH) today announced the planting of its 200,000(th) native koa tree on the Hamakua Coast of Hawaii Island, well on the way to its goal of 1.3 million trees. In three short years, more than 500 acres of former pastureland have been reclaimed as native forest. While koa is the backbone of the forest, HLH has gone beyond, working to develop an entire native ecosystem. In addition to koa, HLH is planting many...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online A plan to build the world’s largest telescope moved one step closer to becoming a reality on Friday, as the Hawaii Board of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR) approved a plan to build the record-breaking instrument at the summit of Mauna Kea volcano. According to Audrey McAvoy of the Associated Press (AP), the ruling allows the US and Canadian universities behind the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) project to begin negotiating a...

Lava fingerprinting reveals differences between Hawaii's twin volcanoes Hawaii's main volcano chains--the Loa and Kea trends--have distinct sources of magma and unique plumbing systems connecting them to the Earth’s deep mantle, according to UBC research published this week in Nature Geoscience, in conjunction with researchers at the universities of Hawaii and Massachusetts. This study is the first to conclusively relate geochemical differences in surface lava rocks from both chains...

The Thirty Meter Telescope Observatory Corp. of Pasadena, Calif., wants to build one of the largest, most advanced telescopes in the world near the summit of Mauna Kea. The Hawaii State Board of Land and Natural Resources unanimously approved a permit to build the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on conservation land joining 13 other telescopes already in operation on the mountain.University of Hawaii President M.R.C. Greenwood tells the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, she was "very pleased" that the...

Boulders deposited by an ancient glacier that once covered the summit of Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii have provided more evidence of the extraordinary power and reach of global  change, particularly the slowdown of a North Atlantic Ocean current system that could happen again and continues to be a concern to climate scientists.A new study has found geochemical clues near the summit of Mauna Kea that tell a story of ancient glacier formation, the influence of the most recent ice age,...

HONOLULU, June 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Hawaiian Legacy Hardwoods (HLH) is implementing investor relations initiatives to accommodate the increased foreign demand for its investment-grade tropical hardwood trees. In a separate initiative, HLH is instituting a series of strategic partnerships with Hawaii-based companies and associations to increase awareness for reforestation efforts in Hawaii and throughout the United States. "The HLH project has received a great deal of interest, not only from...

HONOLULU, June 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Hawaiian Legacy Hardwoods (HLH) implements added investor relations initiatives to increase foreign investment and to build strategic partnerships with Hawaii-based companies and associations. HLH has also published a new, due-diligence investor booklet that can be downloaded online from the Web site. The HLH project provides the unique opportunity to invest in Koa trees by purchasing a unit (100 Koa trees) and is accessible to a wide range of investors...

Chinese and American astronomers may be joining together in a collaborative effort to build the world's largest telescope in hope of gaining a greater understanding about the beginnings of the universe, Xinhua news agency reported on Friday.It has been named the Thirty-Meter-Telescope (TMT), a project originating from and headed by the University of California and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). They expect to have it finished sometime in 2019, according to the official...

A team of astronomers using the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawai'i obtained a new infrared image of Jupiter on Wednesday night, July 22, showing its new scar still glowing in mid-infrared wavelengths.The image complements earlier infrared images, including two taken July 20, shortly after the bruise was noticed, with the Keck II telescope and NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility "” both a stone's throw from the Gemini telescope on Mauna Kea.Jupiter's new glowing bruise, some 8,000...

A consortium of U.S. and Canadian universities on Tuesday announced it has decided to build the world's largest telescope in Hawaii.The telescope, costing $1.2 billion, should allow scientists to see some 13 billion light years away. This is a distance so great, and so far back in time, that researchers should be able to watch the first stars and galaxies as they form.Its mirror will stretch almost 100-feet in diameter (30-meters), which is about three times the diameter of the current...