Sponsored by The University of Texas at Austin, the hybrid festival will feature scientists, authors and innovators both virtually and in person at UT locations, including the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the Marine Science Institute in Port Aransas. The festival will feature panels, podcasts, storytelling, activities and social events that explore everything from medical breakthroughs and energy innovation to understanding outer space — and even the science of barbecue and bluebonnets.

Highlights of the festival will include:

The Cosmic Dawn ("CoDa") Project, an international team of astrophysicists, recently reached a new milestone – CoDa III – the first trillion-element simulation of how the universe evolved in its first billion years. This is when galaxies formed and flooded the universe with enough UV starlight to ionize all its atoms and lift the fog that blocked our view. CoDa III is the most detailed and accurate simulation ever produced of this cosmic era, known as the Epoch of Reionization ("EoR"), aligning theoretical and observational data for the first time.

AUSTIN, Texas — New images from NASA’s newest Space Telescope, JWST, reveal for the first time galaxies with stellar bars — elongated features of stars stretching from the centers of galaxies into their outer disks — at a time when the universe was a mere 25% of its present age.

Astronomers on a historically ambitious and massive galaxy-mapping mission have activated more than 10,000 amateur scientists in 85 countries to help in their quest.

Reflections on 25 Years of Science

The Hobby-Eberly telescope (HET) at The University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory has reached a milestone — 25 years of service. One of the world's largest optical telescopes, the HET captures light from stars and distant galaxies to help astronomers solve the mysteries of the cosmos.

Scientists have uncovered what sets the masses of stars, a mystery that has captivated astrophysicists for decades. Their answer? Stars, themselves.Using highly detailed simulations, a collaborative team led by researchers from the University of Texas at Austin has made a breakthrough discovery that star formation is a self-regulatory process, knowledge that may allow researchers to understand star formation within our own and far away galaxies. Read more

Two new images from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope show what may be among the earliest galaxies ever observed. Both images include objects from more than 13 billion years ago, and one offers a much wider field of view than Webb's First Deep Field image, which was released amid great fanfare July 12.

AUSTIN, Texas — The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is a next-generation optical/infrared telescope being developed in northern Chile that will yield important discoveries on topics such as galaxies in the early universe and Earth-sized planets orbiting nearby stars.

The University of Texas at Austin is investing an additional $45 million in the GMT, the world’s most powerful telescope. This additional funding brings the university’s total commitment to $110.3 million.

FORT DAVIS, Texas – West Texas and the Big Bend region are known for their starry night skies, made possible in part due to ongoing efforts to preserve them. Recently, McDonald Observatory and the non-profit organization Texan by Nature recognized the efforts of Catalyst Midstream Partners (“Catalyst”), a joint venture between Howard Energy Partners (“HEP”), and Devon Energy Corporation (“Devon”), to reduce light emissions at their County Line Processing Plant near Orla, Texas.