Research at the Observatory

Find out what's happening under the domes this week.

A Recipe for the Milky Way

Texas A&M astronomer Jennifer Marshall studies M dwarf stars in the halo of our galaxy. She will use the Otto Struve Telescope to study these stars and discover what types of elements were present in early in the history of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

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The spectrum of an astronomical object such as a star or galaxy is like its fing
The spectrum of an astronomical object such as a star or galaxy is like its fingerprint. Dark lines at specific wavelengths iden

More Featured Projects

The 2.7-meter (107-inch) Harlan J. Smith Telescope at the University of Texas Mc

Shedding Light on a Dark Halo

Graduate student Jeremy Murphy is studying the massive galaxy M87 to better understand the halo of dark matter that surrounds it.

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The globular star cluster M13 lies in the contellation Hercules, and is often re

Special Viewing Night

Have you ever dreamed of looking at faraway objects with a large telescope? This week visitors will gather at McDonald Observatory to observe spectacular objects of our Milky Way galaxy.

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Stars shine in an inky night sky above the open dome of the Harlan J. Smith Tele

Mystery in the Sky

A certain type of dim, small galaxy has been a mystery to astronomers for more than a decade, but University of Texas astronomy graduate student Joshua Adams hopes to learn its secrets.

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Hubble Deep Field

Unraveling the Mystery of 'Dark Energy'

Hobby-Eberly Telescope astronomers are working on a project that could solve perhaps the most baffling scientific mystery of our time: the nature of "dark energy."

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The barred spriral galaxy NGC 1300 as seen by Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA Astronomer of the Week: Shardha Jogee

We all start to party less around middle age, and recent studies by a team led by University of Texas at Austin astronomer Shardha Jogee now finds that the universe, as a whole, is no exception.

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The 2.1-meter (82-inch) Otto Struve Telescope at the University of Texas McDonal

Weighing a Black Hole

How do you weigh a black hole? Obviously, you can't plop it on top of your bathroom scale or heft it onto your grocer's produce balance. University of Texas astronomer Rob Robinson will attempt to weigh a black hole this week using the 2.1-meter Otto Struve Telescope.

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Sponsors

NSF logoThis program is supported by the National Science Foundation under grant AST 0227870. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

 

 

NASA logoThe "NASA Astronomer of the Week" profile is supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under an Education and Public Outreach supplement to Grant/Contract/Agreement No. NAG5-13057 issued through the Office of Space Science.