Mauna Kea Observatories

finally a nice car - this toyota 4runner brought us up to Mauna Kea - with lowrange and 4WD engaged, that was fun! :)

inside the Keck observatory: the counter mirror...

...and the main mirror - about 8m diameter and composed of separate  hexagonal subunits...

...that are automatically bent into perfect shape by computer controlled actuator motors underneath  the mirrors a few 100 times a second. To find out what the perfect shape is, an artificial star is created high up in the atmosphere with the help of a laser beam; it is that artificial start that the computer tries to see as perfect small disc of light; if it doesn't because of atmospheric turbulence, the mirror is corrected with the actuators.

Bad weather was coming up - behind Charloth at the left tha France/Canada/Hawaii telescope, in the middle another Telescope of the USA (which has a sister telescope in Chile) and to the right ... ah, I forgot, older stuff.
C: awsome ... snow in hawaii :D

thats the one from the USA, with its sister telescope in Chile, both together covering almost the whole sky (northern from Mauna Kea, southern from Chile); about 8m diameter as well.

at the height of the visitor center that is reacheable with 2WD (about 2800m), the vegetation starts to get thin... and so does the air, with about 80% oxygen

...and up the gravel road to the 4000m high summit the convoy goes.

Hawaii/France/Canada telescope. And yes, everybody has his own scope here; there is no cooperation between the telescopes and no all encompassing organization (like the ESO in Chile). Strange system.

Again the USA telescope (the sister thingie); the other scopes from the states up here is a sub-mm one  owned and operated by NASA (thought they only make spacecrafts ...) and the 2 Keck telescopes

...here is the sub-mm telescope from NASA...

and these are the 2 Keck telescopes, each having about 8m mirror, and these 2 can be interferometrically linked via a tunnel underneath the building. That achieves 2 things: first the light collecting capacity is doubled, second and much more important, the angle resolution is increased by such an amount, as if you would use a mirror whose diameter is the distance BETWEEN those 2 telescopes! Since they are about 50-100m apart (just guessing here), that angular resolution will not even be surpassed by the planned 30m mirror. In the front you can see or little convoy arriving.

again the left Keck telescope from the inside; here one can see the mirror from the back

...and all of a sudden the blizzard came - snow in Hawaii!

...like christmas, and freeeezing cold. Not to mention the even thinner air - about 60% oxygen partial pressure compared to sealevel. We all were on the edge of fainting I think, even with 2 or more hours adaptation at the visitor center before we got up.
C: ... and we still felt dizzy after adaption when we got out of the car ...