Mauna Kea's Telescopes

There's a meeting of the minds on the mountaintop, with 13 telescopes operated by astronomers from around the world. Although the telescopes are owned and operated by various countries and organizations, any research team can book time on the equipment, paying several thousand dollars per hour to do so, with as long as an 18-month waiting list.

A U.S.–Japan team comprising astronomers from the University of Hawaii, University of Tokyo, Tohoku University, and Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science made an important discovery of distant galaxies obscured by cosmic dust, using the JCMT telescope, which is jointly owned and operated by the United Kingdom, Canada, and the Netherlands. Similarly, a team of astronomers from the University of Hawaii used the Keck telescopes (owned and operated by Caltech and the University of California) to discover a distant galaxy that gives astronomers a glimpse of the Dark Ages, when galaxies and stars were first forming in the universe.