Astronomers across 11 observatories on Hawaii's tallest mountain have cancelled more than 2,000 hours of telescope viewing over the past four weeks because a protest blocked a road to the summit.
Asteroids, including those that might slam into Earth. Clouds of gas and dust on the verge of forming stars. Planets orbiting stars other than our own.
"Any one of them could have been spectacular, could have been Nobel Prize-winning science. We just now will never know," said Jessica Dempsey, deputy director of the East Asian Observatory, which operates one of Mauna Kea's telescopes. Mauna Kea's dry air, clear skies and limited light pollution provide some of the world's best nighttime viewing, and its number of advanced telescopes makes it an unparalleled place for astronomy in the Northern Hemisphere.
Native Hawaiian protesters began blocking the road July 15 to stop the construction of yet another telescope, which they fear will further harm a summit they consider sacred. Hundreds of people have gathered daily to protest the Thirty Meter Telescope, which is being built by U.S. universities, along with Canada, China, India and Japan. The telescope would be Mauna Kea's biggest yet, capable of seeing back 13 billion years.
The state in mid-July blocked all cultural practitioners from going up the mountain when it closed the road to clear the way for construction vehicles, but it began allowing one car up in the weeks after. PAN-Starrs has continued to scan the sky and has spotted one near-Earth object nearly every night of the observatory shutdown, Simons said.
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