Pua Case standing next to the sacred rain rock in Waimea, Hawaii. Credit: Shannon Biggs. Some rights reserved.
They say that Hawaii is Earth’s connecting point to the rest of the universe. Owing to its low light pollution, its remoteness and sheer height, some astronomers also consider Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano on the island of Hawaii, an ideal place to build the world’s most powerful space observatory on land known as the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). However, for many Hawaiians Mauna Kea is far more than a convenient place to construct an 18 story telescope—it’s the most sacred place in the whole of the archipelago.
