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Livestream October 1: Live Tour of the Moon

McDonald Observatory invites young astronomers and their families to join us to learn about the moon, it's craters, and lunar mare for NASA's International Observe the Moon Night later in the week (October 4).

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!

Astronomers Investigate Complex Heart of a Cosmic Butterfly

The Butterfly Nebula, located about 3,400 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius, is one of the best-studied planetary nebulae in our galaxy. Now, a large international team of astronomers, including UT Austin's Harriet Dinerstein, have captured a new view of the Butterfly Nebula using the Webb telescope.

Meet the Universe’s Earliest Confirmed Black Hole: A Monster at the Dawn of Time

An international team of astronomers, led by UT Austin’s Cosmic Frontier Center, has identified the most distant black hole ever confirmed. It and the galaxy it calls home, CAPERS-LRD-z9, are present 500 million years after the Big Bang. That places it 13.3 billion years into the past, when our universe was just three percent of its current age.

The Universe’s Secret Harvest: UT Astronomers Shed Light on “the Cosmic Grapes”

Astronomers have discovered a remarkably clumpy rotating galaxy that existed just 900 million years after the Big Bang, shedding new light on how galaxies grew and evolved in the early universe. Nicknamed the "Cosmic Grapes," the galaxy appears to be composed of at least 15 massive star-forming clumps - far more than current theoretical models predict could exist within a single rotating disk at this early time.