News

Research

One Idea, Two Cosmic Mysteries: Linking Little Red Dots and Globular Clusters

In a preprint publication, John Chisholm and colleagues find that LRDs may be an early form of global cluster.

McDonald Observatory

Korea Partner Increases Investment in Giant Magellan Telescope

UT is helping build the largest-ever ground-based telescope, with Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute.

McDonald Observatory

Nearby “Super Earth” May Be a Better Candidate for Life Than Previously Thought

The planet, known as GJ 3378b, orbits a small, cool star is 25 light-years from Earth and is in its star’s “habitable zone.”

Announcements

University of Texas at Austin Named Among Best Global Universities

U.S. News & World Report placed UT in the top 10 in the U.S. and top-tier worldwide in a variety of science subjects.

McDonald Observatory

HETDEX Opens Massive Cosmic Dataset to Scientists, Novices, and AI

The largest survey ever of the early universe contains 600 million spectra, covering part of the sky equal to 2,000 full Moons.

McDonald Observatory

Black Hole Found that Formed Before Its Galaxy

Findings help explain how black holes millions to billions of times the mass of the sun formed so soon after the Big Bang.

Oden Institute

A Match Made in the Cosmos

Thanks to the NSF-Simons AI Institute for Cosmic Origins (CosmicAI), astronomy and AI are solving each other’s problems.

McDonald Observatory

IGRINS Confirms Long-Suspected Link Between the Composition of Exoplanets and Their Host Stars

A UT Austin spectrograph measures for the first time the magnesium-to-silicon ratio of an "ultra-hot Jupiter."

Texas Advanced Computing Center

Little Red Dots: New Clues from the Early Universe

Volker Bromm used TACC supercomputer simulations to shed light on the mysterious origins of these enigmatic cosmic objects.

McDonald Observatory

Astronomers Thought the Early Universe Was Full of Hydrogen. Now They’ve Found It.

Astronomers using data from the Hobby–Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) based at UT made the discovery.