Protesters have disrupted a groundbreaking and Hawaiian blessing ceremony for the construction of one of the world's largest telescopes near the summit of the Big Island's Mauna Kea.
The webcast host for Tuesday's event says a group of people blocked a caravan of buses carrying attendees to the mountain's summit.
The webcast later showed protesters yelling amid attempts to start the blessing.
The webcast was shut down and it wasn't clear if the event would continue on Tuesday.
The groundbreaking for the $US1.4 billion ($A1.51 billion) Thirty Metre Telescope was being shown via the live webcast because of limited access to the construction site in an area with harsh physical conditions.
Some people oppose building the telescope in a place held sacred by Native Hawaiians.
Kealoha Pisciotta said on Monday her group, Mauna Kea Anaina Hou, planned to protest nonviolently by holding prayer ceremonies on the road at the bottom of the mountain.
She said there were no plans to be disruptive or block people from attending the event.
"We don't want to bother the TMT people," she said.
"That's why we want to do ceremony and ask for the healing - for both us and them, the TMT people."
The groundbreaking was to culminate years of permit applications and approvals from the University of Hawaii and the state land board.
The project was initiated by the University of California, California Institute of Technology and the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy.
Universities and institutions in China, India and Japan later signed on as partners.
Dignitaries from around the world travelled to Mauna Kea for Tuesday's events, which Hurt described as marking "a new era in astronomy".
The telescope should help scientists see some 13 billion light years away for a glimpse into the early years of the universe.
Mauna Kea is the ideal location for observing the most distant and difficult to understand mysteries of the universe, astronomers said.
Its primary mirror promises to be 30 metre, in diameter, made up of 492 smaller mirrors.
Share
