A lot of people have been asking me where I am right now. ‘Where is the telescope’? ‘Can I Google it’?. Well it’s the JCMT telescope and although you might not be able to just type ‘JCMT’ into Google Maps and get it right away you can indeed find them online.

So I assume you know where Hawaii is, and after that the following screen caps from Google Maps should show you where I’ll be this evening and the next few evenings.

In this image you can also see the city of Hilo, where the Joint Astronomy Centre that administers the JCMT and UKIRT is located. It is from here that observers drive up the mountain to get to a place called Hale Pohaku (HP). HP acts as a halfway station where people stay while they observe to keep them acclimatised to the altitude. It is from HP that I am typing right now.

This image clearly shows that Mauna Kea was a volcano. The cinder cones and caldera are visible.

These are the observatories of Mauna Kea. In order going clockwise from the bottom-left we have the CSO, the JCMT, the SMA, Subaru, the Keck telescopes, the NASA IR telescope, the Canadian-France-Hawaii telescope, Gemini North, UH 2.2m telescope and UKIRT.

The JCMT is the larger of the three in this image. Finally, here it is from the ground: