Atop the dormant Mauna Kea volcano, 13,796 feet above the island of Hawaii, the W. M. Keck Observatory has been quietly revolutionizing what is known about the universe. 
These are just a few of the mind-boggling cosmic discoveries to come from the Keck Observatory, which this week celebrates its 20th anniversary. The facility is managed jointly by the University of California and the California Institute of Technology. 
Making these observations possible are the two largest optical and infrafred telescopes in the world. Each stands eight stories tall, weighs 300 tons and operates with nanometer precision.
Scientists using the powerful twin telescopes at the observatory found evidence that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. They uncovered the first planets outside our solar system recently detected water in the atmosphere of one of those planets.
Observations from the Keck led to the discovery of a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way by UCLA's Andrea Ghez, a professor of physics and astronomy who holds the Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Chair in Astrophysics. Professor David Jewitt, who holds joint faculty appointments in the departments of Earth and space sciences and physics and astronomy, continues his explorations at the Keck of the Kuiper Belt, which he discovered in 1992, of some 70,000 small bodies orbiting beyond Neptune.
A spiral galaxy in the constellation Camelopardalis. All images courtesy of W. M. Keck Observatory.
The scientists who work at Mauna Kea "grapple with fundamental questions regarding the origin and nature of our universe," said UC President Mark G. Yudof, in congratulating Keck on two decades of stellar achievement. "Like a ripple effect, the new knowledge gained transforms other scientific disciplines. It transforms coursework at every level of education. And it even transforms the ways in which artists and writers depict the cosmos."
"Astronomy, like all science, is a heavily observational subject," said Jewitt, who is currently on-site at the observatory. "Without fresh data, astronomy would quickly stagnate in a writhing morass of models and theories, with no way to determine the truth. Keck provides some of the best data available and so it helps drive the field forward."
An ongoing collision of two gas-rich disk galaxies.
"It’s really exciting to have access to the world's largest and best telescopes," said Ghez.
Because of the large size of their 10-meter primary mirrors — each mirror is composed of 36 hexagonal segments that work in concert as a single piece of reflective glass — the Keck telescopes offer the greatest potential sensitivity and clarity available in astronomy.
"They have enabled us to achieve tremendous progress in correcting the distorting effects of the Earth’s atmosphere with high–angular resolution imaging," said Ghez, who continues to advance her explorations of the Milky Way.
"The most recent technology of adaptive optics," she said, "is now opening up new horizons and allowing us to learn even more about this black hole at the center of our galaxy — how it was formed, how it grows and how to correctly describe the properties of space and time in the vicinity of such an exotic object."
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See what astronomers have seen through the Keck's telescopes. Learn more in this presentation by Jewitt, "Keck’s Eyes on our Solar System." And see Ghez discussing her work in the videos, "Illuminating Black Holes."
