News & Updates
Evidence for Large Scale Neutral Hydrogen Gas Absorption in the Environments of Lyman Alpha Emitters

By statistically combining the spectra of thousands of distant galaxy spectra, in a technique astronomers call “stacking”, we can see very faint spectral features that are otherwise undetectable in individual galaxies. In a previous post, we shared the work of […]

HETDEX presents at the AAS 224 in New Orleans

We had a great time sharing some of the early science results from HETDEX at the American Astronomical Society’s 224th Annual Meeting held in New Orleans. A small team of HETDEX researchers joined the 3400 other attendees in one of […]

Revealing the Secrets of Lyman Alpha Emitters: The Power of Stacking

  The study of Lyman Alpha Emitters (LAEs) provides a unique window into the early universe, allowing us to unravel the mysteries of galaxy formation and evolution. The HETDEX survey will ultimately map out the 3D positions of over one […]

Galaxy Goldmine, including 50 thousand distant galaxies, revealed in HETDEX’s first publicly released source catalog

Astronomers have barely scratched the surface of mapping the nearly endless stars and galaxies of the heavens. Using supercomputers, researchers with The University of Texas at Austin have now revealed the locations of more than 200,000 new astronomical objects. Their […]

Dark Energy
The Expanding Universe and HETDEX’s Research

There is an unknown force causing the Universe to expand faster as it ages. Explore the history of the Universe and what we currently understand about its evolution and destiny.

Big Bang 13.7 Billion
Years Ago
Dark Ages
First Stars Around 13.5 Billion
Years Ago
Stars, Galaxies, & Planets Develop
Dark Energy Begins to Dominate About a Few Billion
Years Ago
Present
Learn More About Dark Energy
HETDEX: Leading the Revolution

HETDEX is the first major experiment to search for dark energy in the early Universe. Using the giant Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory and world-class instruments the team will map the three-dimensional positions of millions galaxies to help explain expansion over time.

Learn More

“Dark energy is not only terribly important for astronomy, it’s the central problem for physics. It’s been the bone in our throat for a long time.”

Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate, University of Texas at Austin

“Dark energy is our ignorance of what’s going on in the universe right now, don’t get hung up on the words dark and energy. [Dark energy] may not be dark, and it may not be energy. All it is, is our ignorance of how the universe may be expanding, and we don’t know what it is at this point.”

Karl Gebhardt, The University of Texas at Austin

“It’s actually a little mind-blowing, how much information is captured in this.”

Gary Hill, University of Texas at Austin

“Perhaps we see the acceleration of the universe and we attribute that to energy, but maybe our theory of gravity is still incomplete, so we don’t need extra energy, we just need to modify our theory.”

Eiichiro Komatsu, University of Texas at Austin

“HETDEX is very ambitious. It’s going to observe a million galaxies to map out the structure of the universe going over two-thirds of the way back to the beginning of time. We’re the only ones going out that far to see the dark energy component of the universe and how it’s evolving.”

Robin Ciardullo, Penn State University
Join the Search
Dark Energy Explorers
Everybody can join the research!

Help HETDEX classify distant galaxies to measure dark energy when the universe was just 2-3 billion years old.

In the Classroom
For teachers and educators

Discover resources to examine dark energy in the classroom or other educational setting.

Expand the Research and Access the Data
Datasets for dark energy researchers

HETDEX aims to collect and share access to over 600 million fiber spectra with this project. Explore data sets and other findings.

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