California Association for Research in Astronomy

The California Association for Research in Astronomy, known as CARA, is a nonprofit corporation formed by the California Institute of Technology and the University of California to build and operate the W. M. Keck Observatory near the summit of Maunakea in Hawaii. It is dedicated to advancing the frontiers of astronomy and sharing those discoveries with the world. Its board of directors oversees the observatory and its leadership, as when the board announced a change of observatory director in 2023 and named co-chairs of the search committee from the University of California Observatories and from Caltech. The two 10-meter optical and infrared telescopes it operates carry imagers, multi-object spectrographs, high-resolution spectrographs, integral-field spectrometers and laser guide star adaptive optics systems.