Hobby-Eberly Telescope Reveals Galaxy Gold Mine in First Large Survey

February 9, 2023 • by Staff Writer

Astronomers have barely scratched the surface of mapping the nearly endless stars and galaxies of the heavens.

A telescope dome in front of a colorful sunset

The Hobby-Eberly Telescope is enabling scientists to construct the largest galaxy map ever as part of the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment. Credit: Credit: McDonald Observatory/University of Texas at Austin.


Map showing location of stars and galaxies within survey
The Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment tiles the sky, collecting spectroscopic data that is used to pinpoint the location of a star or galaxy and its distance from Earth. (Top) Sky coverage of the planned HETDEX Fall field (in red) and the footprint of this catalog release (in blue), with stars, Lyman-alpha emitting (lae), [O II]-emitting (oii), and low-z galaxies of non [OII] emission (lzg) color coded. Credit: DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/aca962.

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Illustration of the Wolf 1130ABC triple system, composed of the red dwarf star Wolf 1130A, its close and compact white dwarf companion Wolf 1130B, and the distant brown dwarf tertiary Wolf 1130C. The three components of this system are shown scaled to their relative sizes. Image credit: Adam Burgasser, UCSD.

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