FORT DAVIS, Texas — The University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory is announcing that its Frank N. Bash Visitors Center will close operations today at 5 p.m. and remain closed through at least April 19. All public programs are cancelled through at least April 19.

Officials from the university have taken this decision to implement the recommendations for social distancing to slow the spread of the coronavirus, the agent causing the COVID-19 pandemic.

FORT DAVIS, Texas — The University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory has hired Teznie Pugh as its new Superintendent, responsible for managing day-to-day operations at the West Texas site.

Pugh comes to McDonald from Lowell Observatory in Arizona, where she has been on staff for six years, most recently as Operations Manager. She began her tenure at McDonald Observatory on February 10.

FORT DAVIS, Texas — Astronomers have validated their first exoplanet with the Habitable Zone Planet Finder instrument on the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, one of the world’s largest telescopes, located at The University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory.

About twice the size of Earth and possibly 12 times as massive, the planet could be similar to Neptune, but in miniature. Called G 9-40b, it orbits a small star called a red dwarf about 100 light-years from Earth. It completes a full orbit every six Earth days.

AUSTIN — A team of astronomers led by Brendan Bowler of The University of Texas at Austin has probed the formation process of giant exoplanets and brown dwarfs, a class of objects that are more massive than giant planets, but not massive enough to ignite nuclear fusion in their cores to shine like true stars. Using direct imaging with giant ground-based telescopes, they studied the orbits of these faint companions orbiting stars in 27 systems.

AUSTIN — The American Astronomical Society (AAS) has awarded Caroline Morley, assistant professor of astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin, its 2020 Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy for outstanding research and promise for future research by a postdoctoral woman researcher within five years of earning her PhD.

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered its first Earth-size planet in its star’s habitable zone, the range of distances where conditions may be just right to allow the presence of liquid water on the surface. A team of scientists, including Andrew Vanderburg of The University of Texas at Austin, confirmed the find, called TOI 700 d, using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and have modeled the planet’s potential environments to help inform future observations.

AUSTIN, Texas — Twin stars appear to share chemical “DNA” that could help scientists map the history of the Milky Way galaxy, according to new research by astronomer Keith Hawkins of The University of Texas at Austin accepted for publication in The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Hawkins knows something about twin similarities and differences, being himself a fraternal twin. His own study of stellar twins “is a kind of a ‘23 and Me’ for stars,” he said with a laugh.

AUSTIN — Astronomer Caitlin Casey of The University of Texas at Austin has used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to spot the light of a massive galaxy seen just 970 million years after the Big Bang. This galaxy, called MAMBO-9, is the most distant dusty star-forming galaxy that has ever been observed without the help of a gravitational lens.

FORT DAVIS, Texas — A new telescope was dedicated yesterday at The University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory. The 1-meter telescope, funded by the Heising-Simons Foundation, is part of the Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO) global network of robotic telescopes.

“We are very pleased to host this new telescope and to conduct additional research by Texas astronomers on the LCO network, and we thank the Heising-Simons Foundation and the Las Cumbres Observatory for making this additional research tool possible,” said Taft Armandroff, Director of McDonald Observatory.

GMTO Corporation, the organization managing the development of the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) on behalf of its U.S. and international founders, has signed a contract with MT Mechatronics and Ingersoll Machine Tools to design, build and install the telescope’s precision steel structure.