July 11, 2023
Color image of a UNIONS field

Hawai’i Observatories Adding Color to the Euclid Space Mission 

The Euclid mission plans to observe billions of galaxies across more than a third of the sky, building a 3D map of the Universe. By observing more than one-third of the observable sky outside the Milky Way, Euclid will image billions of targets out to a distance of ten billion light years. Astronomers estimate the distances to these galaxies – […]
July 5, 2023
Artist's rendition of the possible scenario

Discovery of Death Defying Planet 

Astronomers from the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy (UH IfA) have made the remarkable discovery of a planet’s survival after what should have been certain doom at the hands of its sun. The Jupiter-like planet, known as  8 UMi b, but officially named Halla, orbits the red giant star Baekdu (8 UMi) at only half the distance separating the […]
October 21, 2020

Anemic Star Cluster Breaks Metal-Poor Record

Two Maunakea telescopes (Keck and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope) have found a globular star cluster in the nearby Andromeda Galaxy that contains a record-breaking small amount of heavier elements like iron. This finding poses questions about how star-dense globular clusters could have formed in the early Universe. A globular star cluster is a large, dense collection of thousands to millions of […]
October 23, 2019

Two Maunakea Observatories Reveal the History of our Large Galactic Neighbor

The nearest large galaxy to us – the Andromeda Galaxy – is a good place to study the history of galaxies like our own Milky Way, from the outside, without the complication of being embedded within. Two Maunakea observatories – Gemini and the Canada-France Hawaii Telescope – provided critical data for studying the motions of star clusters in the outer […]