Photo of the Keck I and II domes at sunset, used as cover art for the award-winning DVD "The Kecks of Mauna Kea."
Exactly how big is our universe, and what place do we have in it? Come explore the Keck Observatory, where the human mind is opened to a vast realm of new possibilities.
An infrared shot of Uranus and its rings, taken by astronomer Mike Brown using the adaptive optics system at Hawaii's Keck Observatory.
The most crowded collision of galaxy clusters has been identified by combining information from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The system MACSJ0717.5+3745 (or MACSJ0717 for short) is located about 5.4 billion light years from Earth.
A shot of faraway Neptune in infrared light, captured using the adaptive optics system at Hawaii's Keck Observatory.
The pre-dawn glow lights up the twin Keck domes moments before the shutters close the domes for the day.
The Keck I Laser propagating, alongside the Keck II and Subaru lasers. WMKO Engineer Andrew Cooper took over 90 x 1minute exposures from near UKIRT on the summit ridge on May 26. The result has been combined into the attached image and a video. The image combines 23 exposures, each 1 minute long. During the exposure, the Keck II laser is aimed over the camera at the Milky Way's Galactic Center. The image also shows a car driving down the summit road which appears as a stream of light.
An image of the Pluto system taken with the one of the ground-based Keck telescopes in Hawaii. The Pluto system moved with respect to the background stars during the one hour of observations, leaving the stars trailed in this image.
A view of Uranus in infrared light, captured by Hawaii's Keck Observatory. The moon Miranda is to the upper left of Uranus, and the moon Puck is a faint smudge to the upper right. The bright splotches on Uranus' disk are clouds.
The nearly 14,000-foot summit of Mauna Kea on Hawaii’s Big Island is home to some of the largest astronomical telescopes in the world, including Keck Observatory’s twin 10-meter reflectors (housed inside the white domes pictured above).
Dr. Mark Showalter and student Bekki Dawson visited Keck Observatory in 2007 to observe the Uranian ring plane crossing, when Earth crossed the ring plane of Uranus.
Primary mirror of the Keck I telescope.
This shot, taken in infrared light using the adaptive optics system at Hawaii's Keck Observatory, shows Neptune and its moon Triton (lower right).
A shot of the primary mirror of the Keck II telescope. For scale, note the railings around the large steel platform.
The two Keck telescope domes are seen from the air.
A bird's eye view of the telescopes on Mauna Kea.
Interior of a Keck telescope.
This first infrared image of asteroid 2005 YU55 was captured by the Keck II telescope.
An aerial view of all the telescopes on top of Mauna Kea.
The twin Kecks, Subaru and IRTF seen from the eastern ridge.
