Star gazing on the Big Island of Hawaii

Author: Matt Preston Become a contributor

Mauna Kea, the tallest mountain in the world is right behind our hotel. Causing all sorts of weather as the air is pushed up on it’s eastern slopes forming almost continual clouds over Kona and more south western towns. Dotted around the top of this mountain are Observatories, some of which you can see from our resort. Impressive looking white domes with all manner of star gazing equipment inside. A tour up to one of these observatories seemed like a great idea until we found out it was $160 each and you couldn’t actually go inside any of them, just watch the sunset from the peak and visit a museum.

So we opted for the $25 option, an option much closer to home. Involving us, 2 telescopes and a slide show all happening right in the grounds of our hotel. We munched down our dinner quickly before meeting up at 8pm for the event to begin.

On arrival you get a little pack with star charts and information leaflets for reading later. Two massive (relatively) telescopes were set up on tripods, the ability to zoom in immense amounts and collect 14,000 times more light than the naked eye. One of them was set up to look at Saturn. We’ve all seen Pictures of Saturn before, but they’re just that, pictures. When you peer into a telescope and see it Live, right there with it’s rings clearly visible it brings a whole new level to astronomy. That was only the beginning!

The two guides took it in turns to tell us about the constellations, the stories behind the Greek mythology and exactly where they are. I was surprised how easy it is to spot their shapes when pointed out. Each guide having a very bright green laser pen they could shine into the night sky to show the exact start they were referring to. The beam appearing to reach all the way to the star!

After that they took it in turns to reset the telescopes at different constellations, planets and even galaxies. I was stunned how much you can actually see out there. We were shown groups of one or two stars (some red and blue) right up to groups containing 50,000 stars in little clumps, actually visible to the naked eye too. The most impressive of all being the entire galaxy we were able to view containing trillions of stars.

A brief and informative slide show told us about the observatories on Mauna Kea. I’ve never really thought about it before but Hubble is now obsolete. In fact it was quite a few years ago. It’s 70′s technology was supposed to be launched in 1986 but the Challenger disaster postponed it until 1990 and it wasn’t fixed and fully operational until later 1993. It’s 2 meter telescope is dwarfed by the 25 meter telescopes now situated on Mauna Kea producing results at a fraction of the cost.

The reason Hawaii is such a great location for star gazing is due to it’s location and size. As it’s in the centre of the Pacific ocean and a tiny island there are no vertical winds. These cause the most distortion when viewing stars. There’s only ever horizontal winds here, coupled with the fact that Mauna Kea is the most accessible high altitude observatory location and you’ve got the perfect setting for viewing the night skies!

It was a fascinating night and the packs we could take away kept us busy until bedtime. I’ll definitely be star gazing some more (albeit with the naked eye) before we go home!

If you’d like to find out more check out the Mauna Kea Observatories website.