Testing General Relativity

November 18, 2015 • by Marc Airhart

Scientists from UT Austin once traveled to the Sahara Desert to observe a rare eclipse and used computers to model ripples in space and time unleashed by the mergers of black holes

A man stands on a ladder outside a white hut in the desert

A team from the University of Texas at Austin constructed a temporary telescope house from plywood and styrofoam in the Sahara Desert to observe the bending of starlight by the sun during a total solar eclipse in June 1973. Photo: Richard Matzner.


Illustration of two black holes spiraling around each other

Binary white dwarfs spiral together, creating gravity waves, in this illustration from NASA. Credit: D. Berry/NASA GSF

Share


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.

McDonald Observatory

A Cosmic Puzzle: Phosphine Found in One Brown Dwarf, Missing in Others

A photo of the dark night sky above greenhouses in West Texas.

McDonald Observatory

Local Properties Keep Stars Bright with Night Sky-Friendly Lighting

The background shows the blackness of space, dotted with colorful stars and galaxies. In a pullout box at the top left, an arrow points to a fuzzy red blob shaped like a jelly bean. A label reads JADES-GS-z14-0.

Research

More Dark Star Candidates Found in JWST Data