Telescope Row West View - Mauna Kea, Hawaii, USA

From a telescope dome on the summit ridge of Mauna Kea (Maunakea in Hawaiian), on Hawaii Island, this camera looks west across a row of observatories as clouds settle far below and the stars wheel across the night sky.

From right to left, the view takes in NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility, the twin Keck domes and Japan’s Subaru Telescope, whose 27-foot (8.2-meter) mirror is among the largest ever made in a single piece. Subaru is the Japanese name for the Pleiades.

The dome this camera sits on has watched the sky here since 1979, when its 12-foot (3.6-meter) telescope was the sixth largest in the world. Today it shares the summit with some of the most powerful telescopes on Earth.

Did You Know? Each of the twin Keck telescopes has a 33-foot (10-meter) mirror made from 36 hexagonal segments that work together as one.

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