Adapted by Emily Howard

Today, a team of researchers, including those at McDonald Observatory, has announced the first significant detection of phosphine in the atmosphere of a cool brown dwarf named Wolf 1130C. With the discovery, astronomers are a step closer to understanding the processes behind how this molecule – an important marker for life - forms. They are also left scratching their heads as to why they haven’t yet detected it in other, similar objects.

The University of Texas at Austin joins with other members of the Giant Magellan Telescope today in welcoming the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to the international consortium, constructing the $2.6 billion observatory in Chile. The Institute’s participation is enabled by a gift to MIT from philanthropists Phillip (Terry) Ragon ’72 and Susan Ragon.

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.

Friday, July 25, through Saturday, July 26, McDonald Observatory hosted the annual Board of Visitors Summer Meeting. Featuring science talks, discussion groups, and telescope tours and viewings, the event connected almost 200 attendees with the latest astronomical research. Although there were minor bouts of stormy weather, each evening the clouds cleared to reveal clear views of the night sky.

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.

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.

By Emily Howard

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).