11/19/2023 0 Comments Mauna kea keck observatory![]() ![]() Congress allowed it to move forward several years late. The LBT, on the other hand, which required a larger plot of land and obscured the sacred peaks, faced 40 lawsuits, eight of which ended up before a federal appeals court. The first two telescopes (which were relatively small in size and already fully funded at the time of the protests) sped through construction. Ultimately the astronomy project-and the squirrel, whose fate was unaffected by the telescope-prevailed. Environmental activists were also worried about the fate of the American red squirrel, which was on the verge of extinction. In the late 1980s, for example, Mount Graham, in Arizona, saw a bitter fight between astronomers, who wanted to build three telescopes-the Heinrich Hertz Submillimeter Telescope, the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope and The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT)-and the San Carlos Apache Tribe, who perform religious ceremonies on the mountain. ![]() The very qualities that make many sites valuable to science-remote locations far from city lights, summits soaring above a good chunk of the atmosphere and clear views that sweep from horizon to horizon-often also draw native worshippers who value mountains as spiritual homes of the gods as well as environmentalists aiming to protect the vulnerable ecosystems of pristine regions. These previous skirmishes share some illuminating similarities with the latest situation, revealing just how fraught astronomy can be when it clashes with local communities. The controversy is nothing new: Mauna Kea is the latest in a long line of mountaintops that have become combat zones between scientists and activists. The court’s decision is the most recent battle wound in a years-long contest between astronomers and native Hawaiians as well as environmentalists who oppose the construction because of the sanctity of the mountain. Last week Hawaii’s Supreme Court rescinded the construction permit for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), an estimated $1.4-billion observatory planned for Mauna Kea, the dormant volcano whose red dusted slopes rise 4,205 meters above the Pacific Ocean on the island of Hawaii. ![]()
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