Hawaii (island) in the context of "Maui"

The Hawaiian Islands (Hawaiian: Mokupuni Hawaiʻi) are an archipelago of eight major volcanic islands, several atolls, and numerous smaller islets in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) from the island of Hawaiʻi in the south to northernmost Kure Atoll. Formerly called the Sandwich Islands by Europeans, the present name for the archipelago is derived from the name of its largest island, Hawaiʻi.

The archipelago sits on the Pacific Plate. The islands are exposed peaks of a great undersea mountain range known as the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain, formed by volcanic activity over the Hawaiian hotspot. The islands are about 1,860 miles (3,000 km) from the nearest continent and are part of the Polynesia subregion of Oceania.

This is a list of islands of the United States, as ordered by area. It includes most islands with an area greater than 20 square miles (approximately 52 km). Mainland areas cut by human-made canals are not considered islands. (source)

A caldera (/kɔːlˈdɛrə, kæl-/ kawl-DERR-ə, kal-) is a large cauldron-like hollow that forms shortly after the emptying of a magma chamber in a volcanic eruption. The ejection of large volumes of magma in a short time can upset the integrity of a magma chamber's structure by in effect removing much of the chamber's filling material. The walls and ceiling of a chamber may now not be able to support its own weight and any substrate or rock resting above. The ground surface then collapses into the emptied or partially emptied magma chamber, leaving a large depression at the surface that may have a diameter of dozens of kilometers. Although sometimes described as a crater, the feature is actually a type of sinkhole, as it is formed through subsidence and collapse rather than an explosion or impact. Compared to the thousands of volcanic eruptions that occur over the course of a century, the formation of a caldera is a rare event, occurring only a few times within a given window of 100 years. Only nine caldera-forming collapses are known to have occurred between 1911 and 2022, with the caldera collapses at Kīlauea, Hawaii, in 2018 and Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai in 2022 being the most recent. Volcanoes that have formed a caldera are sometimes described as "caldera volcanoes".

The Mauna Kea Observatories (MKO) are a group of independent astronomical research facilities and large telescope observatories that are located at the summit of Mauna Kea on Hawaiʻi, United States. The facilities are located in a 525-acre (212 ha) special land use zone known as the "Astronomy Precinct", which is located within the 11,228-acre (4,544 ha) Mauna Kea Science Reserve. The Astronomy Precinct was established in 1967 and is located on land protected by the Historical Preservation Act for its significance to Hawaiian culture. The presence and continued construction of telescopes is highly controversial due to Mauna Kea's centrality in native Hawaiian religion and culture, as well as for a variety of environmental reasons.

The location is nearly ideal because of its dark skies from lack of light pollution, good astronomical seeing due to low atmospheric turbulence, low humidity, high elevation of 4,207 m (13,802 ft), position above most of the water vapor in the atmosphere, clean air, low cloud cover and low latitude location.

The Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain is a mostly undersea mountain range in the Pacific Ocean that reaches above sea level in Hawaii. It is composed of the Hawaiian ridge, consisting of the islands of the Hawaiian chain northwest to Kure Atoll, and the Emperor Seamounts: together they form a vast underwater mountain region of islands and intervening seamounts, atolls, shallows, banks and reefs along a line trending southeast to northwest beneath the northern Pacific Ocean. The seamount chain, containing over 80 identified undersea volcanoes, stretches about 6,200 km (3,900 mi) from near the Aleutian Trench off the coast of the Kamchatka peninsula in the far northwest Pacific to the Kamaʻehuakanaloa Seamount (formerly Lōʻihi), the youngest volcano in the chain, which lies about 35 kilometres (22 mi) southeast of the Island of Hawaiʻi.

The Hawaiʻi hotspot is a volcanic hotspot located near the namesake Hawaiian Islands, in the northern Pacific Ocean. One of the best known and intensively studied hotspots in the world, the Hawaii plume is responsible for the creation of the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain, a 6,200-kilometer (3,900 mi) mostly undersea volcanic mountain range. Four of these volcanoes are active, two are dormant; more than 123 are extinct, most now preserved as atolls or seamounts. The chain extends from south of the island of Hawaiʻi to the edge of the Aleutian Trench, near the eastern coast of Russia.

While some volcanoes are created by geologic processes near tectonic plate convergence and subduction zones, the Hawaiʻi hotspot is located far from plate boundaries. The classic hotspot theory, first proposed in 1963 by John Tuzo Wilson, proposes that a single, fixed mantle plume builds volcanoes that are then cut off from their source by the movement of the Pacific plate. This causes less lava to erupt from these volcanoes and they eventually erode below sea level over millions of years. According to this theory, the nearly 60° bend where the Emperor and Hawaiian segments within the seamounts was caused by shift in the movement of the Pacific Plate. Studies on tectonic movement have shown that several plates have changed their direction of plate movement because of differential subduction rates, breaking off of suducting slabs, and drag forces. In 2003, new investigations of this irregularity led to the proposal of a mobile hotspot hypothesis, suggesting that hotspots are prone to movement instead of the previous idea that hotspots are fixed in place, and that the 47-million-year-old bend was caused by a shift in the hotspot's motion rather than the plate's. According to this 2003 study, this could occur through plume drag taking parts of the plume in the direction of plate movement while the main plume could remain stationary. Many other hot spot tracks move in almost parallel so current thinking is a combination of these ideas.

Mauna Loa Observatory (MLO) is an atmospheric baseline station on Mauna Loa on the island of Hawaiʻi, located in the US state of Hawaii.