University of Texas at Austin
Department of Astronomy and McDonald Observatory
The Department of Astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin includes 23 active teaching faculty. There are 24 Research Scientists, as well as a number of Research Associates employed by McDonald Observatory. Together they employ many postdoctoral fellows and maintain a robust research program in virtually all fields of astronomy. In the past several years, the faculty have won six of the major awards given by the American Astronomical Society, in additional to several other international awards and honors.
McDonald Observatory is home to the 2.7m Harlan J. Smith Telescope and the 2.1m Otto Struve telescope, as well as several smaller research telescopes. The observatory is the managing partner in the 9.2m Hobby-Eberly Telescope, located on Mt. Fowlkes. In addition, the Department and Observatory personnel have access to the 10m Caltech Submillimeter Observatory as well as the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT).
Researchers and faculty have recognized expertise in galactic chemical evolution, extrasolar planets, studies of the properties of galaxies and cosmology and employ observational techniques across the complete electromagnetic spectrum. A major addition to the Hobby-Eberly telescope, the wide field upgrade coupled with the extremely powerful VIRUS spectrographs (Visible IFU Replicable Unit Spectrograph) will enhance our understanding of Dark Energy in the range 1.9 < z < 3.5 through the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX). This study of baryon acoustic oscillations will map the positions of >800,000 Lyman alpha emitting galaxies. Members of the Texas Cosmology Center (an interdisciplinary program between the astronomy and physics department) will lead the interpretation of the results.
The Department and the Observatory have demonstrated strength in training instrumentalists and former graduates are leaders in astronomical instrumentation.
