HET Telescope

— How beautiful West Texas is! The area is packed with adventure. You can visit the Davis Mountains State Park, the Nature Conservancy’s Davis Mountains Preserve, Fort Davis National Historic Site, the town of Marfa and several other places of interest. We also make time to spend hours exploring The University of Texas’ McDonald Observatory. Whether a guided trip to see the telescopes or a Star Party, you will not run out of options to learn new things and admire the beautiful landscape and dark sky nights. During this particular trip, an old friend of mine was the superintendent of the Observatory complex. We were treated to a special behind-the-scenes to the various telescopes and facilities. According to the University of Texas, the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) was “constructed with a unique objective: to gather a very large amount of light, specifically for spectroscopy, at extremely low cost.” The HET is one of the world’s largest optical telescopes and is operated by a consortium of institutions: The University of Texas at Austin, Pennsylvania State University, Stanford University, Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich and Georg August University of Göttingen. The actual telescope consists of 91 identical hexagonal segments of the primary mirror array, measuring 1 meter side to side and weighing about 250 lbs. A visitor can walk in the main area and admire the impressive array of mirrors. The view on this photo is from the Harlan J. Smith telescope building nearby.