AFRL’s Aloha Telescope celebrates 10-year anniversary empowering students through outreach

It’s been 10 years since the Air Force Research Laboratory, or AFRL, successfully launched the astronomy outreach program called Aloha Explorations at the Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing site, or AMOS, in Maui, Hawaii. This STEM outreach project uses an 11-inch Celestron telescope, also known as the Aloha Telescope, to provide students in grades K-12 the ability to view live images from their classrooms and remotely control the telescope via an internet connection. The idea for this project originated from Dr. James Sowell, an astronomer and observatory director at the School of Physics. (This story also appeared at Los Alamos Daily Post and Defense Visual Information Distribution Service.)