Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT)

Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT)

The CFH observatory hosts an optical and infrared telescope of 3.58 meters. The observatory is located on the summit of Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano 4,204 meters high, located on the island of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean.
The CFHT telescope is operating since 1979.
The Observatory headquarters are located in Waimea-Kamuela. Waimea is a small country town of 6 000 people, nestled at 760 meters between the dormant Mauna Kea volcano and the Kohala Mountains. CFHT is one of the 25 largest telescopes in the world. Despite his age and small size today, it remains to the forefront of astronomy for the quality of its site, its instrumentation and its services.

Image: Video of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) on the summit of Mauna Kea volcano. © film by Jean-Charles Cuillandre, music by Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori CFHT astronomy images by Jean-Charles Cuillandre (CFHT) & Giovanni Anselmi (Coelum). The Hawaii Island or Hawaii is a volcanic island in the Pacific Ocean, one of eight main islands that comprise the U.S. state of Hawaii. Often called Big Island, as it is larger than all the other islands of the archipelago combined.

On Mauna Kea

The main users are the CFHT scientists from Canada, France, and Hawaii. Collaborative arrangements also offer access to the telescope, astronomers from Taiwan, Brazil and China. At first, astronomers came to Hawaii to make their own observations today, the staff of CFHT observations is responsible for all users. They provide maximum use of the telescope observing a given program (fashion queue).
CFHT is now operated remotely from Waimea by a single observer. Education is one of the important missions of the observatory. Of stargazing sessions for the general public are organized, CFHT is a wonderful educational tool for science and astronomy. In the early years, 80 pictures were taken with photographic plates, quickly replaced by CCDs, today, the detectors used are digital cameras. MegaCam detectors, covering a field of 1 degree by 1 degree in the sky, with an excellent image resolution, the quality of the sky above Mauna Kea. MegaCam WIRCam and cover a wide range of studies, near-Earth asteroids in the vicinity of our solar system, to distant galaxies. CFHT contributes to a better understanding of dark matter or dark energy, or the Milky Way.

The observations in the near-infrared light complement those made in visible light.

Image: The observatory hostes a CFHT optical and infrared telescope of 3.58 meters. The observatory is located on the summit of Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano 4,204 meters high, located on the island of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean.