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“You have to be a presence or you’re going to disappear. Under lockdown, the movement is challenged with keeping supporters, who are used to seeing dispatches from the mountain, engaged and connected to it. The Protect Mauna a Wākea Instagram account, one of two accounts that had been operating from the camp, has 136,000 followers who rely on photos and videos of kiaʻi to draw inspiration and feel plugged into the action. The movement has a robust social media presence that acts as a direct line of communication between the front line and its supporters abroad. Today, they continue that labor from their homes.Īt least on the mountain, they could offer their physical presence to inspire supporters, who could be shielded from the invisible - and, certainly, less romantic - work kiaʻi had been doing behind the scenes. Before the latest standoff on the mountain, many kiaʻi had spent years tirelessly writing letters, submitting testimony to city council meetings, combing over management plans, and trying to monitor the movements of multiple parties with vastly more power and resources than they’ll ever have. Still, their departure from the mountain was marked by emotional exhaustion and trepidation for what was to come. Should an attempt be made to initiate the project, they knew they could be back up there in half an hour. After determining that there was no imminent threat, they decided to pack up their site, which hosted anywhere between 30 and 3,000 people at any given time. When the pandemic hit, kiaʻi were already assessing the threat of construction and considering the impact on resources. Their Pu‘uhonua o Pu‘uhuluhulu camp was equipped with a kitchen, solar trailers, and even a “university” grounded in Native Hawaiian science and culture. For nine months, kia’i encamped on Maunakea, watching for TMT construction crews. For kiaʻi, protecting the mountain from desecration is more than a cultural responsibility it’s a lineal duty to those who came before them and the generations who will succeed them.
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It is one of the most sacred sites - if not the most sacred - in Hawaiian culture. In Hawaiian traditions of creation, the mountain is an ancestor and shares genealogical ties with Native Hawaiians, or Kanaka Maoli. From the Pu‘uhonua o Pu‘uhuluhulu camp, protectors kept watch for construction crews for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) - planned to be the largest telescope in the Northern Hemisphere - through windstorms, hail, and overnight temperatures that dipped well below 30 degrees Fahrenheit. While she lives only a 30-minute drive away, she says, “I have to go back and look at videos or pictures to remind myself that we were really up there.”įor nearly nine months, she and other kiaʻi, or protectors, were sleeping in a parking lot over a lava field that marks the beginning of the access road up to Maunakea’s summit.
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a study of the small bodies in the primitive solar system orbiting beyond Neptune.The ongoing CFHT scientific programmes mainly cover: Espadons, a stellar spectropolarimeter that has already been used to detect magnetic fields in the accretion disks of proto-stars.
#OBSERVATORY IN HAWAII FULL#
four times the apparent area of the full Moon MegaCam, a 340 million pixel CCD optical camera made in France, covering a field of 1 degree, i.e.Its researchers are developing three powerful instruments: Today, in the face of the new generation of giant telescopes such as the GTC, the CFHT is having to innovate its astronomical instrumentation to remain competitive. The observatory was created at the end of the 1970s following a tripartite agreement signed in 1974 by France, Canada and the University of Hawaii.Īt the time it was built, the CFHT was amongst the largest instruments in the world.
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The Canada France Hawaii Telescope is a 3.6 metre diameter telescope installed at an altitude of 4200 metres at the summit of the Mauna Kea volcano on the island of Hawaii.