ʻImiloa Astronomy Center
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ʻImiloa Astronomy Center
ʻImiloa Astronomy Center is an astronomy and culture education center located in Hilo, Hawaii. Conceived by founding Director George Jacob in 2001, it features exhibits and shows dealing with Native Hawaiians, Hawaiian culture and history, astronomy (particularly at the Mauna Kea Observatories), and the overlap between the two. ʻImiloa includes a 120-seat planetarium, which features a fulldome video projection system. Planetarium presentations include ʻImiloa's exclusive signature show, "Maunakea: Between Earth and Sky." The bilingual exhibits (in Hawaiian and English) offer two views of Origins and Voyages, presenting the tools, visions and discoveries of the astronomers and the Polynesian voyagers (see Polynesian navigation), the first group of whom are thought to have voyaged to Hawaii from the Marquesas Islands. Visitors to ʻImiloa will leave with a new understanding of the early Polynesians, who used the stars to find these isolated islands in the middle of the vast P ...
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Big Bang
The Big Bang is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models based on the Big Bang concept explain a broad range of phenomena, including the abundance of light elements, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, and large-scale structure. The uniformity of the universe, known as the horizon and flatness problems, is explained through cosmic inflation: a phase of accelerated expansion during the earliest stages. A wide range of empirical evidence strongly favors the Big Bang event, which is now essentially universally accepted.: "At the same time that observations tipped the balance definitely in favor of the relativistic big-bang theory, ..." Detailed measurements of the expansion rate of the universe place the Big Bang singularity at an estimated  billion years ago, which is considered the age of the universe. Extrapolating this cosmic expansion backward in ...
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541132 Leleākūhonua
541132 Leleākūhonua () ( provisional designation ) is an extreme trans-Neptunian object and sednoid in the outermost part of the Solar System. It was first observed on 13 October 2015, by astronomers at the Mauna Kea Observatories, Hawaii. Based on its discovery date near Halloween and the letters in its provisional designation , the object was informally nicknamed "The Goblin" by its discoverers and later named Leleākūhonua, comparing its orbit to the flight of the Pacific golden plover. It was the third sednoid discovered, after and , and measures around in diameter. Discovery Leleākūhonua was first observed on 13 October 2015 at the Mauna Kea Observatory , by American astronomers David Tholen, Chad Trujillo and Scott Sheppard during their astronomical survey for objects located beyond the Kuiper Cliff. The unofficial discovery was publicly announced on 1 October 2018. The survey uses two principal telescopes: For the Northern hemisphere, the 8.2-meter Subaru T ...
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514107 Kaʻepaokaʻawela
514107 Kaepaokaāwela (), provisional designation in astronomy, provisionally designated and nicknamed Bee-Zed, is a small asteroid, approximately in diameter, in a resonant, co-orbital motion with Jupiter. It is an unusual minor planet in that its orbit is Retrograde and prograde motion, retrograde, which is opposite to the direction of most other bodies in the Solar System. It was discovered on 26 November 2014, by astronomers of the Pan-STARRS survey at Haleakala Observatory on the island of Maui, United States. Kaepaokaāwela is the first example of an asteroid in a 1:–1 orbital resonance, resonance with any of the planets. This type of resonance had only been studied a few years before the object's discovery. One study suggests that it was an interstellar asteroid captured 4.5 billion years ago into an orbit around the Sun. Nomenclature The Hawaiian name ''Kaepaokaāwela'' is composed of ''ka'' 'the', ''epa'' 'tricky' or 'mischievous', referring to its contrary orb ...
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Alpha Centauri
Alpha Centauri (, α Cen, or Alpha Cen) is a star system in the southern constellation of Centaurus (constellation), Centaurus. It consists of three stars: Rigil Kentaurus (), Toliman (), and Proxima Centauri (). Proxima Centauri is the List of nearest stars, closest star to the Sun at 4.2465 light-years (ly) which is 1.3020 parsecs (pc). Rigil Kentaurus and Toliman are Sun-like stars (G-type main-sequence star, class G and K-type main-sequence star, K, respectively) that together form the binary star system . To the naked eye, these two main components appear to be a single star with an apparent magnitude of −0.27. It is the brightest star in the constellation and the List of brightest stars, third-brightest in the night sky, outshone by only Sirius and Canopus. Rigil Kentaurus has 1.1 times the Solar mass, mass () and 1.5 times the Solar luminosity, luminosity of the Sun (), while Toliman is smaller and cooler, at and less than . The pair ...
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Ithaca, New York
Ithaca () is a city in and the county seat of Tompkins County, New York, United States. Situated on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake in the Finger Lakes region of New York (state), New York, Ithaca is the largest community in the Ithaca metropolitan statistical area. It is named after the Greek island of Ithaca (island), Ithaca. As of 2020, the city's population was 32,108. A college town, Ithaca is home to Cornell University, an Ivy League university, and Ithaca College. Nearby is Tompkins Cortland Community College (TC3), located in Dryden, New York, Dryden. History 17th century Native Americans lived in this area for thousands of years. When reached by Europeans, this area was controlled by the Cayuga people, Cayuga tribe of Indians, one of the five tribes comprising the Iroquois, Iroquois Confederacy. Society of Jesus, Jesuit missionaries from New France in present-day Quebec had a mission to convert the Cayuga as early as 1657. 18th century Saponi and Tutelo peoples ...
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Sagan Planet Walk
The Sciencenter's Sagan Planet Walk is a walkable scale model of the Solar System, located in Ithaca, New York. The model scales the entire Solar System—both planet size and distances between them—down to one five billionth of its actual size. The exhibition was originally created in 1997 in memory of Ithaca resident and Cornell Professor Carl Sagan. Consisting of eleven obelisks situated along a path through the streets of downtown Ithaca, the original Planet Walk leads from the Sun at Center Ithaca to Pluto at the Ithaca Sciencenter. In 2012, the model was expanded to include a representation of Alpha Centauri, the Sun's closest neighboring star, at the ʻImiloa Astronomy Center in the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo. The addition of the Alpha Centauri Obelisk made it the world's largest exhibition, until the Akaa Solar System Scale Model added Proxima Centauri in 2018 at a distance of away from Akaa. In 2014, the inner planets and Sun were removed as part of exten ...
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Hawaii Route 2000
Route 200, known locally as Saddle Road, traverses the width of the Island of Hawaii, from downtown Hilo to its junction with Hawaii Route 190 near Waimea. The road was once considered one of the most dangerous paved roads in the state, with many one-lane bridges and areas of marginally maintained pavement. Most of the road has now been repaved, and major parts have new re-alignments to modern standards. The highway is mostly one-lane in each direction, but there are two lanes on the uphill portions. The highway reaches a maximum elevation of and is subject to fog and low visibility. Many rental car companies used to prohibit use of their cars on Saddle Road, but now allow use of the road. The highway experiences heavy use as it provides the shortest driving route from Hilo to Kailua-Kona and access to the slopes of Mauna Loa and the Mauna Kea Observatories. Route description Waiānuenue Avenue The mile marker 0 is posted in Hilo on the traffic signal at the intersection of ...
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Hawaiian Language
Hawaiian (', ) is a critically endangered Polynesian language of the Austronesian language family, originating in and native to the Hawaiian Islands. It is the native language of the Hawaiian people. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the U.S. state of Hawaii. King Kamehameha III established the first Hawaiian-language constitution in 1839 and 1840. In 1896, the Republic of Hawaii passed Act 57, an English-only law which subsequently banned Hawaiian language as the medium of instruction in publicly funded schools and promoted strict physical punishment for children caught speaking the Hawaiian language in schools. The Hawaiian language was not again allowed to be used as a medium of instruction in Hawaii's public schools until 1987, a span of 91 years. The number of native speakers of Hawaiian gradually decreased during the period from the 1830s to the 1950s. English essentially displaced Hawaiian on six of seven inhabited islands. In 2001, native ...
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Hualālai
Hualālai (pronounced in Hawaiian) is an active volcano on the island of Hawaii in the Hawaiian Islands. It is the westernmost, third-youngest and the third-most active of the five volcanoes that form the island of Hawaii, following Kīlauea and the much larger Mauna Loa. Its peak stands above sea level. Hualālai is estimated to have risen above sea level about 300,000 years ago. Despite maintaining a very low level of activity since its last eruption in 1801, and being unusually inactive for the last 2,000 years, Hualālai is still considered active, and is expected to erupt again sometime in the next 100 years. The relative unpreparedness of the residents in the area caused by the lull in activity would worsen an eruption's consequences. The area near Hualālai has been inhabited for centuries by Hawaiian natives, dating back to before recorded history. The coast to its west in particular had several royal complexes. The volcano is also important ecologically, is home to ...
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Mauna Loa
Mauna Loa (, ; ) is one of five volcanoes that form the Island of Hawaii in the U.S. state of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. Mauna Loa is Earth's largest active volcano by both mass and volume. It was historically considered to be the largest volcano on Earth until the submarine mountain Tamu Massif was discovered to be larger. Mauna Loa is a shield volcano with relatively gentle slopes, and a volume estimated at , although its peak is about lower than that of its neighbor, Mauna Kea. Lava eruptions from Mauna Loa are silica-poor and very fluid, and tend to be non-explosive. Mauna Loa has likely been erupting for at least 700,000 years, and may have emerged above sea level about 400,000 years ago. Some dated rocks are 470,000 years old. The volcano's magma comes from the Hawaii hotspot, which has been responsible for the creation of the Hawaiian Island chain over tens of millions of years. The slow drift of the Pacific Plate will eventually carry Mauna Lo ...
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Mauna Kea
Mauna Kea (, ; abbreviation for ''Mauna a Wākea''); is a dormant Shield volcano, shield volcano on the Hawaii (island), island of Hawaii. Its peak is above sea level, making it the List of U.S. states by elevation, highest point in Hawaii and List of islands by highest point, the island with the second highest high point, behind New Guinea, the world's largest tropical island with multiple peaks that are higher. The peak is about higher than Mauna Loa, its more massive neighbor. Mauna Kea is unusually Topographic prominence, topographically prominent for its height: its prominence from sea level is List of mountain peaks by prominence, 15th in the world among mountains, at ; its prominence from under the ocean is , rivaled only by Mount Everest. This Topographic prominence#Wet prominence and dry prominence, dry prominence is greater than Everest's height above sea level of , and some authorities have labeled Mauna Kea the tallest mountain in the world, from its underwater ba ...
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