Mauna Kea

Our first story today is far-out.

Correction, it's actually FarFarOut, which is the unofficial name for a Solar System object recently discovered by a team using the Subaru eight-meter telescope at Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

Follow-up observations were performed with the Gemini North and Magellan telescopes to determine the orbit of this newly found world, and it is truly far, far out there.

In fact, it's so far, far out there that it now holds a record for the most distant object observed in our solar system, edging out the previous record holder, Farout.

We have the two active, one active volcano is called Mauna Loa, almost 14,000 feet.

One that's 200 feet higher is Mauna Kea, which is, Very dormant.

That's the one with the observatories on it.

On the observatories.

Kohala is the oldest part of the island.

The soils are the most, this part of the soils are one of the most developed parts of the island.

Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa have developed soils on parts of the land,

but a

We built South San Francisco.

We built the Mauna Kea.

You know, and I would kind of take credit.

I wouldn't really take credit, but I would just say

And that got canceled.

I was supposed to be out back on the big island in Hawaii in August, leading another group of guys up Mauna Kea.

which I did with some friends a year ago, I think February 2019, I think that was.

Supposed to be back out there in Mauna Kea in August, and that didn't happen.

I signed up for the Spartan Ultra Beast in Vermont in September because...

Spartan racing was something that I did like so adamantly for so long.

So we just kind of put our feet in, went back to the pool.

And then that night was our night to go to Mauna Kea.

So Mauna Kea is actually the tallest mountain in the world.

So yes, it is taller than what's it called? I'm still on jet lag, I think.

So from the base of the mountain to the top of the mountain, Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain in the world.

You can go.

So when you go to visit that as a visitor, it's also free.

The sunset, um, oh the energy there so okay i wasn't sure because i'm quite sensitive to energy throughout this entire trip but up there uh lincoln felt it my other son did didn't but i was like i literally feel like i'm standing on the ground and the ground's doing this like the energy is wild and you can see mauna loa So there, and I don't want to get this wrong.

It orbits a dying star in the constellation Hercules, 1,200 light-years from Earth.

It was discovered by the Hungarian Automated Telescope Network using small, wide-field telescopes at two observatories, the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in Arizona and the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii.

Observations were first made in 2005 and 2008.

Follow-up photometry captured its transits in 2011 through 2013.

And patience in exoplanet science is everything.

The Hungarian Automated Telescope Network, known as HATNET, operates a collection of these small, wide-field telescopes distributed across two sites.

One set sits at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory on Mount Hopkins in southern Arizona, The other watches from the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

Together, they monitor hundreds of thousands of stars simultaneously, watching for the telltale dimming that occurs when a planet crosses in front of its host star as seen from Earth.

Not under the darkest, clearest sky humanity has ever observed from.

not from the summit of Mauna Kea or the ice fields of Antarctica or the driest stretches of the Atacama Desert.

Proxima Centauri shines at an apparent magnitude of roughly 11, which is roughly 100 times too dim for the human eye to detect without optical assistance.

You need at least a modest telescope to see it at all, and even through that telescope it appears as nothing more than a faint reddish dot, utterly unremarkable, lost among thousands of brighter background stars.

You can register for a free account online and upload plans to be reviewed.

The University of Hawaii is asking for the public's input on the update of the 2022 master plan for the Mauna Kea lands.

Updates are going to be consistent with Act 255, which includes allowing future astronomy facility development to prioritize reusing existing observatory footprints.

UH is committed to having no more than nine observatories after 2033.