McDonald Observatory is announcing today that it will remain closed to the public beyond the previously announced date, April 19, based on Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s March 31 executive order extending school closures and other mitigation measures into May due to the continuing public health crisis posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dear Friends of McDonald Observatory,
I’d like to share a McDonald Observatory status update with you.
This is an extraordinary time for our nation and our planet. Our primary concern is the health and safety of our staff, our astronomy community, and our friends and supporters.
McDonald Observatory continues to operate at this difficult time, but at a somewhat reduced capability. Our team members are adapting to the very changed circumstances and are practicing social distancing and other important precautions.
FORT DAVIS, Texas — The University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory is announcing that its Frank N. Bash Visitors Center will close operations today at 5 p.m. and remain closed through at least April 19. All public programs are cancelled through at least April 19.
Officials from the university have taken this decision to implement the recommendations for social distancing to slow the spread of the coronavirus, the agent causing the COVID-19 pandemic.
FORT DAVIS, Texas — The University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory has hired Teznie Pugh as its new Superintendent, responsible for managing day-to-day operations at the West Texas site.
Pugh comes to McDonald from Lowell Observatory in Arizona, where she has been on staff for six years, most recently as Operations Manager. She began her tenure at McDonald Observatory on February 10.
FORT DAVIS, Texas — Astronomers have validated their first exoplanet with the Habitable Zone Planet Finder instrument on the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, one of the world’s largest telescopes, located at The University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory.
About twice the size of Earth and possibly 12 times as massive, the planet could be similar to Neptune, but in miniature. Called G 9-40b, it orbits a small star called a red dwarf about 100 light-years from Earth. It completes a full orbit every six Earth days.
AUSTIN — A team of astronomers led by Brendan Bowler of The University of Texas at Austin has probed the formation process of giant exoplanets and brown dwarfs, a class of objects that are more massive than giant planets, but not massive enough to ignite nuclear fusion in their cores to shine like true stars. Using direct imaging with giant ground-based telescopes, they studied the orbits of these faint companions orbiting stars in 27 systems.
AUSTIN — The American Astronomical Society (AAS) has awarded Caroline Morley, assistant professor of astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin, its 2020 Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy for outstanding research and promise for future research by a postdoctoral woman researcher within five years of earning her PhD.
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered its first Earth-size planet in its star’s habitable zone, the range of distances where conditions may be just right to allow the presence of liquid water on the surface. A team of scientists, including Andrew Vanderburg of The University of Texas at Austin, confirmed the find, called TOI 700 d, using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and have modeled the planet’s potential environments to help inform future observations.
AUSTIN, Texas — Twin stars appear to share chemical “DNA” that could help scientists map the history of the Milky Way galaxy, according to new research by astronomer Keith Hawkins of The University of Texas at Austin accepted for publication in The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Hawkins knows something about twin similarities and differences, being himself a fraternal twin. His own study of stellar twins “is a kind of a ‘23 and Me’ for stars,” he said with a laugh.
AUSTIN — Astronomer Caitlin Casey of The University of Texas at Austin has used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to spot the light of a massive galaxy seen just 970 million years after the Big Bang. This galaxy, called MAMBO-9, is the most distant dusty star-forming galaxy that has ever been observed without the help of a gravitational lens.
