The McDonald Observatory is an astronomical observatory located near the unincorporated community of Fort Davis in Jeff Davis County, Texas, United States. The facility is located on Mount Locke in the Davis Mountains of West Texas, with additional facilities on Mount Fowlkes, approximately 1.3 kilometers (0.81 mi) to the northeast. The site is property of the University of Texas at Austin, and receives its main funding from the university. The observatory produces StarDate, a daily syndicated radio radio program consisting of short segments related to astronomy that airs on many National Public Radio affiliates. The observatory also produces a similar program, Universo, in Spanish. The McDonald Observatory was originally endowed by the Texas banker William Johnson McDonald (1844–1926), who left $800,000 - the bulk of his fortune - to the University of Texas to endow an astronomical observatory. The provision of the will was challenged by McDonald's relatives, but after a long legal fight, construction began at Mt. Locke. The then-unnamed Otto Struve Telescope was dedicated on May 5, 1939, and at that time was the second largest telescope in the world.
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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 ...
Astronomy
Jul 19, 2023
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A team of astronomers has used observations from the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) at The University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory to discover some of the longest tails of gas yet observed escaping a planet.
Astronomy
Jun 7, 2023
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A group of astronomers from The University of Texas at Austin has found that a telescope idea shelved by NASA a decade ago can solve a problem that no other telescope can: It would be able to study the first stars in the ...
Astronomy
Nov 16, 2020
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Fritz Benedict has used data he took over two decades ago with Hubble Space Telescope to confirm the existence of another planet around the Sun's nearest neighbor, Proxima Centauri, and to pin down the planet's orbit and ...
Astronomy
Jun 2, 2020
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New research by Stella Offner, assistant professor of astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin, finds that magnetic waves are an important factor driving the process of star formation within the enormous clouds that ...
Astronomy
Sep 13, 2018
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The discovery of an eighth planet circling the distant star Kepler-90 by University of Texas at Austin astronomer Andrew Vanderburg and Google's Christopher Shallue overturns our solar system's status as having the highest ...
Astronomy
Dec 14, 2017
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High school senior Dominick Rowan of Armonk, New York, is making discoveries about other worlds. Working with University of Texas at Austin astronomer Stefano Meschiari, Rowan has helped to find a Jupiter-like planet and ...
Astronomy
Dec 10, 2015
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University of Texas astronomer Natalie Gosnell has used Hubble Space Telescope to better understand why some stars aren't evolving as predicted. These so-called "blue stragglers" look hotter and bluer than they should for ...
Astronomy
Dec 8, 2015
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After several years and a massive team effort, one of the world's largest telescopes has opened its giant eye again. The Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) at The University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory has completed ...
Space Exploration
Nov 4, 2015
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(Phys.org) —Astronomers from the University of Texas at Austin and Germany's Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) recently found a surprise when studying some of the oldest star clusters in our galaxy. ...
Astronomy
May 9, 2014
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