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HETDEX Project On Track to Probe Dark Energy

Three years into its quest to reveal the nature of dark energy, the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) is on track to complete the largest map of the cosmos ever. The team will create a three-dimensional map of 2.5 million galaxies that will help astronomers understand how and why the expansion of the universe is speeding up over time.

Planet Hugging a Dead Star May Have Survived its Death Throes

A team of astronomers led by our Andrew Vanderburg has used the TESS and Spitzer space telescopes to discover what may be the first intact planet found closely orbiting a white dwarf, the dense leftover of a sun-like star. The work included follow-up observations with our Hobby-Eberly Telescope.

GMT site

Major NSF Grant Accelerates Development for the GMT

The Giant Magellan Telescope project has received a $17.5M grant from the National Science Foundation to accelerate the prototyping and testing of some of the most powerful optical and infrared technologies ever engineered. UT Austin is a founding partner of the GMT.

Unlocking the Secrets of Solar System Formation

Stella Offner and colleagues have proposed a new method for the formation of aluminum-26 in star systems that are forming planets. Its radioactive decay is thought to provide a heat source for the building blocks of planets, called planetesimals.