September 12, 2022
Artistic rendition of the exoplanet TOI-1452 b

CFHT Detects a Probable Ocean World

Astronomers using the Canada-France Hawaii telescope have identified a probable “Ocean World”  among the candidates found by NASA’s TESS satellite. Measuring the minute wobble of the planet’s host star, they found that planet is much less dense than a rocky body like Earth. The planet is also far enough from its star that water can exist as liquid, so this […]
June 16, 2022
Near Sun object 323P/SOHO

Maunakea Observatories Help Catch a Comet Disintegrating

Using the Subaru telescope on Maunakea, astronomers have discovered a Jupiter-like planet in the Three Maunakea telescopes (Subaru, CFHT and Gemini) played key, complementary parts in capturing the first ever images of a rocky comet (named 323P/SOHO) breaking apart close to the Sun. This helps to explain why so few near-Sun comets are observed. Read Read more, in the Subaru […]
January 7, 2022
Milky Way illustration

MKOs Combine to Observe the Ruins of an Ancient Star Cluster

Astronomers have found the ruins of an ancient globular cluster in the outskirts of the Milky Way. Using the Canada-France-Hawaii and Gemini North telescopes on Maunakea, in conjunction with the Gaia satellite, they showed that the motions and compositions of stars in an outer-galaxy “stream” mean that it must have originated as a globular star cluster. In fact, this stream […]
January 7, 2022
Rogue planets

Rogue Planets by the Hundred

Online viewers of the Subaru Telescope live stream were mesmerised by a cluster of more than a dozen meteors One Scouring through images from CFHT, Subaru and a number of other telescopes worldwide, an international team of astronomers has found the largest collection of free-floating “rogue” planets ever discovered, measuring their brightness, colour and miniscule motions across the sky. These […]
February 10, 2021

CFHT Stares at a Young Rebel: the AU Mic Planetary System

An international team of astronomers used the capabilities of SPIRou on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Maunakea to measure the mass and density of a Neptune-like planet orbiting very close to the newborn, and highly active star AU Microscopii. Their analysis also shows that this warm planet orbits in the equatorial plane of the host star. This hints that the process […]
August 12, 2019

Earth is Safe! Critical Maunakea Observations of Asteroid’s Near Earth Passage

The Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) on Maunakea is protecting the Earth by monitoring asteroids that enter Earth’s neighbourhood. On their first night back after resuming operations, CFHT observed the near-Earth asteroid 2006QV89. This asteroid was first discovered back in 2006, but it wasn’t until this summer that it was visible from Earth again. Much in the same way that […]