Amid protest, Hawaii astronomers lose observation time

HONOLULU (AP) — Asteroids, including those that might slam into Earth. Clouds of gas and dust on the verge of forming stars. Planets orbiting stars other than our own.

This is some of the research astronomers say they missed out on as a protest blocked the road to Hawaii's tallest mountain, one of the world's premier sites for studying the skies.

Astronomers said Friday they will attempt to resume observations, but they have already lost four weeks of viewing — and in some cases, they won't be able to make up the missed research. Protesters, meanwhile, say they should not be blamed for the shutdown.

Astronomers across 11 observatories on Mauna Kea cancelled more than 2,000 hours of telescope viewing, work they estimate would have led to the publication of about 450 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

"Any one of them could have been spectacular, could have been Nobel Prize-winning science. We just now will never know," said Jessica Dempsey, deputy director of the East Asian Observatory, which operates one of Mauna Kea's telescopes.

Stormy weather, earthquake damage and maintenance issues have interrupted observations before, but this is the longest all of the observatories on the dormant Big Island volcano have been shut down since its first telescope opened a half-century ago.

The observatories' large telescopes are owned and operated by universities and consortiums of universities including the University of California and California Institute of Technology.

The national governments of Canada, France, Japan and others also fund and operate telescopes on their own or as part of a group. Astronomers around the world submit proposals to institutions they are members of to compete for valuable time on the telescopes.

Mauna Kea's dry air, clear skies and...