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On the afternoon and evening of June 5, people in Hawaii will have the rare opportunity to view the planet Venus cross the disk of the sun. This is the last time this will happen in our lifetimes: The next transit of Venus will occur in 2117.
Observing a “once-in-a-generation” supernova visible for just 10 minutes became the challenge for University of Hawaii astronomers Alan Stockton and Hsin-Yi Shihin August 2011.
IfA Research Affiliate Gary Greenberg reexamined a sample brought back by Apollo 11 and found something interesting.
See Scientific American article
The first direct image of a planet in the process of forming around its star has been captured by University of Hawaii astronomer Adam Kraus.
One of the most dramatic scientific discoveries of the last thirty years was the finding that the Universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate and will therefore last forever. This discovery, announced in 1998, has led to the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics, awarded on Tuesday to the leaders of two large groups of astronomers. And it would not have happened without the observatories on Mauna Kea, a camera designed and built at the IfA, and the pioneering work of IfA astronomer John Tonry, a member of one of those teams.
Astronomers at the University of Hawaii at Manoa have discovered a new comet that they expect will be visible to the naked eye in early 2013.