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Posted: Monday, December 1st, 2008 2:00 PM HST

New small telescope slated for Big Island

By Associated Press

HONOLULU (AP) _ A University of Hawaii professor says the Big Island will be home to a new telescope. Professor Robert Fox of the university's Hilo campus says the device can fit into a garage-size building and will search for comet-like objects beyond Neptune. Fox says it will not be placed atop Mauna Kea, site of several telescopes. He says other Big Island sites are being considered. the telescope will be part of the four-telescope Taiwan-American Occultation Survey, which seeks to detect and measure relatively small objects of between two and 17 miles in diameter. Partners in the project include Taiwan's Academia Sinica, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Yonsei University in South Korea. (Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved)