By COLIN M. STEWART

Tribune-Herald Staff Writer

The University of Hawaiis Institute for Astronomy is currently working to beef up faculty and equipment at its Hilo facility, despite cutbacks in some funding sources.

While the institute is based in Manoa, it is charged with managing the Mauna Kea Observatories on the Big Island, as well as the Haleakala Observatories on Maui. In early 2001, the IfA completed an $11 million, 35,000-square-foot, split-level building at 640 North Aohoku Place to serve as its main Hilo base facility.

The plan, said IfA Director Guenther Hasinger, was to fill the facility with staff, faculty and equipment from the get-go, and to rapidly turn it into, among other things, an instrumentation center of excellence, to build and test state-of-the art equipment used by astronomers.

But then organizers began running into budgetary roadblocks.

It was constructed 12 years ago with the original intent to put more stuff in there, he said. They were hoping to get more money from the (Legislature) to build up the Hilo complex.

Over the years, the institute has added equipment and people piecemeal as funding became available, Hasinger said. Faculty members are expected to earn their keep, so to speak, by snagging valuable grants to fund projects.

Currently, the facility houses five faculty members and about 80 employees. By comparison, the IfAs Manoa facility houses 30 faculty members and 200 employees, and its Maui facility hosts three faculty and 40 staffers.

The building itself features a bevy of machine shops and laboratories for the development and maintenance of scientific instruments and telescopes, a library, an auditorium and remote telescope operation rooms connected via fiber optic cable to the observatories atop Mauna Kea.

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Astronomy facility looking to future