![]() "Mauna Kea continues to be the preferred choice for the location of the Thirty Meter Telescope, and the will continue intensive efforts to gain approval for TMT in Hawaii,” Henry Yang, Chair of the TMT International Observatory Board, says in a statement. However, they haven’t given up hope for the original site on Mauna Kea quite yet. If the courts rule against the Thirty Meter Telescope’s construction, its Board of Governors will shift their focus to these islands on the far side of the Atlantic. In fact, one of the world’s current largest telescopes, the Gran Telescopio Canarias, is already operating on the island, Reuters reports. Now, faced with serious challenges on the ground and in court, the organization responsible for building the telescope has chosen an alternative location: La Palma, the westernmost of the Canary Islands that sit just off Morocco’s coast.Īs on Mauna Kea, the Spanish-owned Canary Islands are no stranger to telescopes. Last December the Hawaiian Supreme Court canceled the project's work permits in light of a lawsuit filed to block it, Maddie Stone reports for Gizmodo. Their voices are slowly gaining traction. Crowds have even gathered to physically block construction crews from trying to begin work at the site. But Mauna Kea is also an important religious site, and the planned 18-story, $1.4-billion telescope has rankled local communities. The snowcapped volcano is already home to 13 telescopes and the astronomy community has long praised the locale as having some of the world's clearest views of the night sky, Overbye reports. Named after the diameter of its primary light-collecting mirror, the Thirty Meter Telescope is far from the first on Mauna Kea. An end to the fight, however, could be in sight as an alternative location for the giant telescope has been identified on Spain’s Canary Islands, Dennis Overbye reports for The New York Times. ![]() For years, astronomers and native Hawaiians have waged a bitter war over the placement of a massive telescope, which was originally planned to sit atop the Big Island's volcano Mauna Kea. ![]()
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