With construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope atop Mauna Kea embroiled in controversy, some opponents of the giant observatory say they are perplexed as to why the University of Hawaii would choose to abandon plans for a teaching telescope they never protested as some sort of consolation.
“That’s one of the few ones we never had really an issue with,” said Kealoha Pisciotta, a TMT opponent and former telescope technician. “I don’t know why they would do that.”
After struggling to repair the broken 36-inch Hoku Kea telescope for years, UH-Hilo was planning to replace it with a smaller “off-the-shelf” version for $450,000. The telescope would be used to train students in its undergraduate astronomy program on the mountain.
The money was already appropriated and the project was ready to be put out to bid, according to faculty members.
But it was instead scrapped after UH selected the site as the next to be decommissioned in order to meet Gov. David Ige’s request that a quarter of the telescopes on the mountain be removed by the time TMT is completed in the next decade.
If the goal was to reduce concerns over TMT — the largest telescope ever to be built on the mountain — removing Mauna Kea’s smallest observatory would likely not accomplish much, if anything at all, said Pisciotta and Deborah Ward, who are two of six people challenging TMT’s conservation land use permit in the state Supreme Court.
“In fact, it’s one of the telescopes we did not object to,” said Ward, a board member of the Hawaii Sierra Club. She said the group had written a letter in support of the telescope, which was to recycle one of Mauna Kea’s original observatory sites, when it was first proposed.
“At this point, we would like to see science that’s doing well on the mountain continue and the people who are working for those observatories continue their work, but we haven’t actually called for (early) decommissioning,” Ward said.
She said she’d like to see UH’s master lease for the summit expire in 2033 and any telescopes that would remain be given individual leases. Pisciotta, a Hawaiian cultural practitioner, said she’d prefer that all telescopes come down at that date, but doesn’t object to them using the mountain, which many Hawaiians consider sacred, for the rest of the master lease.
UH-Hilo Chancellor Donald Straney said last week that Hoku Kea, which still sits in its 30-foot-wide dome on the mountain, was chosen to be removed since it’s the only one that isn’t currently operating.
While it may be the easiest to take down, department staff say it will have the largest impact on Big Island students who will continue to lack a working telescope on the mountain.
“Removal of the one telescope whose purpose was education and workforce training seems to be the worst possible choice,” said one faculty member, who wished to remain anonymous.
The Hoku Kea was not without its controversy.
UH-Hilo purchased it with a $650,918 National Science Foundation grant only to find it inoperable. NSF provided another $141,664 grant for the telescope’s camera.
According to Straney, the manufacturer went out of business after the warped primary mirror was delivered in 2010, and there was no means to seek reimbursement.
But after years of frustration, the department was about to try to put those failures behind it by ordering a replacement.
“In case people asked: After months of work, the day we were to open the bidding process to order the telescope and sign a contract with a project engineering firm is the day I was told that Hoku Kea was to be removed,” Hoku Kea director Pierre Martin wrote on a pro-TMT Facebook page. “We were that far along.”
Straney said the $450,000 that the state allocated to buy the new telescope will instead be spent on renovations for the 2.2-meter telescope operated by UH-Manoa.
He said UH-Manoa has pledged to give Hilo students time on its telescope and that other observatories will be asked to offer observing time.
A UH spokesman said that will be a boost for UH-Hilo’s program because students will have access to the best telescopes in the world.
A faculty member said that won’t be the same as having the Hoku Kea, since students can’t use the other telescopes for technical training.
Martin wrote on Facebook that UH-Hilo “gains nothing here” since it already had a collaborative agreement with UH-Manoa.
“My opinion: After months of involvement in these discussions, I am fairly certain that the current status of Hoku Kea was not that critical,” he said. “It was gone, working or not. Politics has won over education.”
Email Tom Callis at tcallis@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
