News

10 Jan 2008
New Instrument, Telescope Upgrades Enable Pioneering Dark Energy Experiment

27 Apr 2006
McDonald Observatory Receives $5M Challenge Grant to Study Elusive Dark Energy

 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

Video

Karl Gebhardt, HETDEX Project Scientist, explains how a McDonald Observatory telescope will look for dark energy. Play video

Glossary

Light-year

A unit of length used by astronomers to measure great cosmic distances. One light-year is equal to the distance light travels in one year, which is about 5.88 trillion miles or almost 800 times the diameter of our solar system. The nearest star is a mere four light-years away, while the nearest large galaxy lies about 2.5 million light-years from Earth. Astronomers also use another unit, the parsec, which is equivalent to 3.26 light-years.

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