What's Wrong With Astronomy?

Maureen Dowd approvingly quotes Senator John McCain's twittered mockery of $2 million in federal funding for the promotion of astronomy in Hawaii, because "nothing says new jobs for average Americans like investing in astronomy." Last I checked, astronomy was a legitimate branch of science. To conduct the kind of astronomy that involves observation of light, you ideally need to put your observatory somewhere that is A) high in the air, and B) far away from artificial light. As such, there's no better place in America to build an observatory than the summit of Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii, which is A) nearly 14,000 feet above sea level, and B) in Hawaii, which is farther away from the rest of civilization than anywhere else on planet Earth. They take light pollution on the Big Island so seriously that individual light fixtures in restaurants on the beach, some 14,000 feet and 40 miles away from the observatory, are required to have special shields that keep the light from emitting upward. The observatory site is managed by the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, which notes:

Mauna Kea is unique as an astronomical observing site. The atmosphere above the mountain is extremely dry -- which is important in measuring infrared and submillimeter radiation from celestial sources - and cloud-free, so that the proportion of clear nights is among the highest in the world. The exceptional stability of the atmosphere above Mauna Kea permits more detailed studies than are possible elsewhere, while its distance from city lights and a strong island-wide lighting ordinance ensure an extremely dark sky, allowing observation of the faintest galaxies that lie at the very edge of the observable Universe. A tropical inversion cloud layer about 600 meters (2,000 ft) thick, well below the summit, isolates the upper atmosphere from the lower moist maritime air and ensures that the summit skies are pure, dry, and free from atmospheric pollutants...More major telescopes are now located on Mauna Kea than on any other single mountain peak, and Mauna Kea is widely recognized as offering better conditions for optical, infrared and millimeter/submillimeter measurements than any other developed site.

Of course, there was a time when other states also had areas with similar geographic features--high elevation, little light-polluting human development--and as such built observatories that were the site of important scientific achievments, like the discovery of Pluto, which happened at the Lowell Observatory in 1930 in the then-very small town of Flagstaff. That is, Flagstaff, Arizona, currently represented in the United States Senate by John McCain.