Astronomy on Mauna Kea

June 4, 2001 -- The Earth isn't an especially good place to do astronomy. The problem is the atmosphere -- it's like a dirty windshield. Astronomers like to put their telescopes in space because of that, but that's expensive and those telescopes can't be very big. So they spend a lot of time inventing ingenious ways to see the heavens more clearly.

Telescopes on Mauna Kea

The top of 14,000-foot Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano on the big island of Hawaii, is one of the last best places to do astronomy. That's mostly because of its unique locale. But astronomers now have devised a way to make "the seeing," as they call it, even better -- by creating telescopes that adapt themselves to conditions in the sky above them. Join All Things Considered and NPR's Christopher Joyce on Monday, June 4, for a visit to Mauna Kea.

David Tholen, University of Hawaii astronomer, asteroid hunter

Mauna Kea is also home to some older and smaller telescopes, which are still useful for things like saving the Earth. David Tholen, an astronomer with the University of Hawaii, uses a telescope with an 88-inch mirror to watch for asteroids that might be on a collision course with our planet. He's remarkably calm about the whole thing. Join NPR's David Kestenbaum for a night above the clouds and below the stars, on All Things Considered, Tuesday, June 5.

View the telescope images that astronomer David Tholen used to spot asteroid 2000TJ1.

Visit the Gemini observatory's homepage at www.gemini.edu.