Special viewing on the 36-inch telescope is paused until summer 2026 to allow for important updates and maintenance to preserve the ongoing operations of this historic telescope.
Our 36-inch (0.9m) research telescope is a powerful window on the universe, providing outstanding views of planets, star clusters, nebulae and galaxies.
AUSTIN, Texas — University of Texas at Austin Assistant Professor Sally Dodson-Robinson has received a Faculty Early Career Development award of $363,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
These prestigious NSF awards, called CAREER grants, recognize promising young faculty members and support their research and education missions with five years of funding. Dodson-Robinson has so far been awarded $363,000 in support of her research program called "Giant Planets in Dusty Disks."
Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers racing to find some of the earliest galaxies ever glimpsed have now confirmed that a galaxy first detected last summer is in fact among the earliest ever found. The findings are in the journal Nature. Follow-up observations since first detection of Maisie’s galaxy have revealed that it is from 390 million years after the Big Bang.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has awarded 148 hours of observing time to a group of scientists led by John Chisholm, assistant professor of astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin. He is co-principal investigator on the selected proposal, along with Hakim Atek at the Institut D'Astrophysique de Paris. “That’s over six days on the telescope,” says Chisholm. And only one hour less than the proposal that was awarded the most amount of time.
BY EMILY HOWARD
Keith Hawkins, assistant professor of astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin, has used chemical cartography – also known as chemical mapping – to identify regions of the Milky Way’s spiral arms that have previously gone undetected. His research, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, demonstrates the value of this pioneering technique in understanding the shape, structure, and evolution of our home Galaxy.
On Saturday, May 20, McDonald Observatory dedicated the David G. Booth Director’s House. This dedication is in recognition of David Booth’s $10 million gift to The University of Texas at Austin toward the Observatory’s share of construction costs of the Giant Magellan Telescope.
This first snapshot of COSMOS-Web contains about 25,000 galaxies — an astonishing number larger than even what sits in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field,” said Caitlin Casey, associate professor of astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin and co-principal investigator of COSMOS-Web.
Warner and Swasey Co. of Cleveland created this model of the 82-inch Telescope (later re-named the Otto Struve Telescope) before they built the actual telescope on-site at McDonald Observatory. The model is now on display at the observatory's Frank N. Bash Visitors Center. (Photo by Kevin Mace/McDonald Observatory)
AUSTIN — A Hubble Space Telescope study of massive galaxies two to three billion years after the Big Bang has uncovered two remarkable results that
challenge the common lore that major mergers play a dominant role in growing galaxies over a wide range of cosmic epochs.
