What makes Mauna Kea the best site for ground-based astronomy?
One of the reasons for this is the excellent quality of the site for observing in the optical, infrared, and submillimeter/millimeter wavelengths. Moisture in the humid lower atmosphere of the Earth absorbs most of the infrared and submillimeter/millimeter radiation emitted by celestial objects, but the thin, extremely dry air atop Mauna Kea is transparent to this radiation, and astronomers can make their studies there more satisfactorily than at most other observing sites on Earth. This, combined with the superior optical quality of the site, allows astronomers to study many objects in the Universe al all these wavelengths. Different information about the objects is revealed at each wavelength.
