By Emily Howard

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. As such, it provides a unique opportunity to study the structure and evolution of this enigmatic period.

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, UC Santa Barbara, Yale University, and National Taiwan Normal University have found that a fair number of Sun-like stars emerge with their rotational axis tilted with respect to their protoplanetary disks, the clouds of gas and dust from which solar systems are born.

On Friday, July 25, representatives from Austin Bat Refuge in Austin, Texas, will be onsite at McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, Texas, to release a Big Freetail bat back into the wild. Named Hubble after the famous astronomer, he is thought to have accidentally hitched a ride from the Observatory to Austin in some astronomy gear. Big Freetail bats do not live in Central Texas but are a common sight in the Big Bend region, where the Observatory is located.

COSMOS-Web provides the most expansive and deepest observations of the universe to date. Now, the team behind this work - which includes several members from The University of Texas at Austin - has released the data and images associated with its full survey, all processed and ready for analysis (see images, specifically, here).

The Cosmic Frontier Center in The University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Astronomy is proud to announce its second class of postdoctoral fellows. The three Frontier Fellows were selected from a competitive pool of 73 applicants. Joining the center in the fall of 2025, their work will support its mission to uncover the origin of galaxies, black holes, and stars in the early universe.

An international team of scientists, including from McDonald Observatory at The University of Texas at Austin, has discovered a potentially star-forming cloud that is one of the largest single structures in the sky and among the closest to the Sun and Earth ever to be detected.

The cloud of gas is located about 300 light years away. Scientists estimate that it would look vast to stargazers on Earth - if it were visible - measuring about 40 moons across the sky. Its mass is estimated as roughly 3,400 times that of the Sun.

On April 15, The University of Texas at Austin announced its 2025 Outstanding Staff Awards. Thirty-one staff members were selected from a highly competitive pool of nominations. Among those to receive the honor is McDonald Observatory Engineering Scientist John Good.

In March, the Space Telescope and Science Institute announced the selection of 274 programs for the fourth year of observations on its James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). This includes approximately 8,500 hours of observing time. Of that, a whopping 10 percent (over 800 hours) was awarded to programs led or co-led by astronomers at The University of Texas at Austin.

With support from the Kavli Foundation, the Vice Presidents of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) name a special invited lecturer to kick off each semiannual AAS meeting with a presentation on recent research of great importance. At the 246th AAS meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, on 9 June 2025, the Fred Kavli Plenary Lecture will be given by Dr.