Looking at the universe is what astronomy is about. But in the 1990s an awareness grew that astronomers were busy looking at the sky but failing to look at their feet -- at the summit land of Mauna Kea where 13 observatories stand. Awareness also grew that astronomers were looking back 13 billion years to the origins of the universe but failing to look back 2,000 years to the origins of Hawaiian culture.

An idea was born to develop a Mauna Kea Astronomy Education Center to show how the two cultures relate, how Polynesians from the South Pacific used their voyaging canoes to follow stars to Hawaii and how astronomers use their giant telescopes to follow paths of twinkling light into the distant past.
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Everywhere, inside and out, will be reminders of Hawaiian culture.

All of the landscaping is native vegetation or plants brought here by Polynesians. Sweet potatoes will be growing around the parking lot.

Visitors will enter the building at its piko, its navel, then walk through a stylized forest as if going to the summit of Mauna Kea, director Giles said.

First, they see the traditional Hawaiian view of the origin of the world from the Kumulipo, the pre-European chant telling how the world and life were born out of darkness.

Visitors seated in a dark "object theater" will watch as lights reveal objects important in ancient life, such as a full-size model of a now-extinct Polynesian pig.

Beyond that is the modern scientific view of the universe derived from astronomy. [...]

But in this 21st-century room, Hawaiian culture stays with the viewer. Every exhibit is explained with a sign written first in Hawaiian, then in English. Turn a corner and there is a scale model of the voyaging canoe Hokule'a.