The Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope is located near the summit of Mauna Kea

Mauna Kea

Mauna Kea is a volcano on the island of Hawaii. Standing above sea level, its peak is the highest point in the state of Hawaii. However, much of the mountain is under water; when measured from its oceanic base, Mauna Kea is over tall—significantly taller than Mount Everest...

 mountain on Hawaii

Hawaii

Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...

's Big Island

Hawaii (island)

The Island of Hawaii, also called the Big Island or Hawaii Island , is a volcanic island in the North Pacific Ocean...

 at an altitude of 4,204 meters (13,793 feet), and is one of the observatories that comprise the Mauna Kea Observatory

Mauna Kea Observatory

The Observatories at Mauna Kea, , are an independent collection of astronomical research facilities located on the summit of Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawai'i, USA. The facilities are located in a special land use zone known as the "Astronomy Precinct," which is located in the Mauna Kea...

. Operational since 1979, the telescope is a Prime Focus/Cassegrain

Cassegrain reflector

The Cassegrain reflector is a combination of a primary concave mirror and a secondary convex mirror, often used in optical telescopes and radio antennas....

 configuration with a usable aperture diameter of 3.58 meters.

CFHT hosts three state-of-the-art instruments: MegaPrime, a wide-field high resolution CCD mosaic of 36 CCDs and 340 MegaPixels; WIRCam, an infra-red mosaic of 4 detectors and 16 MegaPixels; and ESPaDOnS, a new échelle spectrograph / spectropolarimeter. PUEO, an adaptive optics bonette, is still offered to users, while Gecko, a very high resolution spectrograph, and MOS, the Multi Object Spectrograph, can be used on special request only.

CFHT, in collaboration with Coelum Astronomia, maintains a public-outreach website called "Hawaiian Starlight" which offers extremely high-quality versions of CFHT images in various formats including a yearly calendar.

The corporation is bound by a tri-partite agreement between the University of Hawaii and the governments of France and Canada. Additional funding for WIRCam came from Korea and Taiwan.

Currently, CFHT observing time is offered to scientists from Canada, France and the State of Hawaii, the three funding partners. Astronomers from the European Union can also submit proposals through the Opticon Access program. An agreement between the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics and CFHT opens the telescope to the Taiwanese astronomical community up to the end of 2010.

Future instrumentation planned for CFHT include SITELLE, a Fourier transform spectrograph, and SPIRou, a near-infrared spectropolarimeter. Conceptual development is also underway for IMAKA, a wide-field optical imaging camera that incorporates ground layer adaptive optics.

The telescope is being used to conduct the Pan-Andromeda Archaeological Survey

Pan-Andromeda Archaeological Survey

Pan-Andromeda Archaeological Survey is a large-scale astronomical survey using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.The survey is exploring the structure and content of the Andromeda Galaxy and its neighbour, the Triangulum Galaxy . Clues to the formation of these galaxies may lie within the vast...

 (PAndAS), a large-scale astronomical survey of the Andromeda Galaxy

Andromeda Galaxy

The Andromeda Galaxy is a spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Andromeda. It is also known as Messier 31, M31, or NGC 224, and is often referred to as the Great Andromeda Nebula in older texts. Andromeda is the nearest spiral galaxy to the...

 (M31) and the Triangulum Galaxy

Triangulum Galaxy

The Triangulum Galaxy is a spiral galaxy approximately 3 million light years from Earth in the constellation Triangulum. It is catalogued as Messier 33 or NGC 598, and is sometimes informally referred to as the Pinwheel Galaxy, a nickname it shares with Messier 101...

 (M33). The project involves members of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics

Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics

The NRC Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics is the leading Canadian centre for astronomy and astrophysics.Named for the Nobel laureate Gerhard Herzberg, it was formed in 1975 as part of the National Research Council of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario...

.

External links

• The Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope Corporation (official site)
• Hawaiian Starlight
• Photos of the Canada–France–Hawaii telescope and other Mauna Kea observatories from "A Gentle Rain of Starlight: The Story of Astronomy on Mauna Kea" by Michael J. West. ISBN 0-93154-899-3.