Home Page

IGRINS Confirms Link Between the Composition of Exoplanets and Their Stars

Using the high-resolution Immersion GRating INfrared Spectrograph (IGRINS), astronomers were able to simultaneously quantify the magnesium and silicon content of the exoplanet’s atmosphere. This is the first time such a measurement has been made. And with it, astronomers have found that the planet WASP-189b shares the same magnesium-to-silicon ratio as its host star, providing the first observational evidence of a widely adopted assumption about planet formation.

A Night at the Telescope

A group of astronomy undergraduate students from the University of Texas at Austin is invited to “test drive” the 107 inch Harlan J. Smith telescope at the McDonald Observatory. As Harlan J. Smith Scholars, the students are tasked with investigating a distant globular cluster and determining whether it may contain a black hole.

Astronomers Thought the Early Universe Was Full of Hydrogen. Now They’ve Found It.

Astronomers using data from the Hobby–Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) have discovered tens of thousands of gigantic hydrogen gas halos, called “Lyman-alpha nebulae,” surrounding galaxies 10 billion to 12 billion years ago. Known as Cosmic Noon, this is an epoch in the early universe when galaxies were growing their fastest. To spur this growth, they would have needed access to vast reservoirs of hydrogen gas, a key building block for stars. However, until recently, astronomers had only found a handful of these essential structures.

Help Renovate Our Visitors Center - Gifts Being Matched!

As our Frank N. Bash Visitors Center enters its third decade in service, we’ve started an extensive renovation of its public spaces. You are invited to be part of this transformative project by contributing to its funding. All gifts are currently being matched by sponsors!