The Mauna Kea Observatory, an institute of the University of Hawai'i, is considered one of the most important land-based observatories in the world for its isolated, unobstructed views of space without interference from man-made light sources. The twin Keck telescopes are largest of its instruments.
The W.M. Keck telescopes are the two largest telescopes of the Mauna Kea Observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawai'i. These are reflecting telescopes located at an altitude of 4,145 m (13,600 ft). Keck I started observing in 1993 and Keck II started in 1996. This is a Ritchey-Chrétien type of telescope on an altazimuth mount, assisted by active optics. The Keck telescopes have, essentially, 10m mirrors; however, rather than having one mirror each telescope has 36 smaller hexagonal mirrors working together. In addition, Keck I and II can work together, via interferometry; this gives them the effective power of an 85m mirror.
Almost half of the observing runs on the KeckTelescopes are for one night or half a night.
And the builders of instruments such as spectrographs that are used in conjunction with the KeckTelescopes will have easy access for troubleshooting and monitoring the performance of their instruments.
The twin KeckTelescopes, each with a primary mirror 10 meters in diameter, are the largest optical and infrared telescopes in the world.
Both Kecktelescopes are equipped with adaptive optics, which compensates for the blurring due to atmospheric turbulence.
In addition, the Keck I and Keck II telescopes can work together as the Keck Interferometer; the 85 m separation gives them the effective angular resolution in one direction of an 85 m mirror, comparable with the resolution of other astronomical interferometer arrays such as the VLTI (200 m separation).
The W. Keck Observatory is managed by the California Association for Research in Astronomy, a non-profit 501 (c)(3) organization whose board of directors includes representatives from Caltech and the University of California.
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