McDonald Observatory - History

The astronomical observatory of the University of Texas, in the Davis Mountains near Fort Davis, TX. Its largest instrument is the 9·2 m/360 in Hobby-Eberly Telescope, designed for the spectroscopic analysis of starlight. Other instruments include reflectors of 2·7 m/107 in and 2·1 m/82 in aperture.

The McDonald Observatory is located in the Davis Mountains, 450 miles west of Austin, Texas (USA).

The Otto Struve Telescope and the Harlan J. Smith Telescope are located on Mount Locke at an altitude of 6,791 ft/2,070 m. The Hobby-Eberly Telescope, dedicated in late 1997, is located on the summit of Mount Fowlkes at 6,659 ft/2,030 m above sea level.

Currently, the observatory operates four research telescopes at its West Texas site:

9.2 m Hobby-Eberly Telescope 2.7 m Harlan J. Smith Telescope 2.1 m Otto Struve Telescope and an 0.8 m telescope

A 0.9 m telescope, formerly used for research, is now used for visitor programs.

The observatory also hosts one of the four globally networked Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE) telescopes, and is a Monitoring Network of Telescopes (MONET) site.

History

The McDonald Observatory was originally endowed by the Texas banker William Johnson McDonald (1844–1926), who left $800,000 (the bulk of his fortune) to the University of Texas to endow an astronomical observatory.

One of the telescopes at McDonald Observatory was shot at by a janitor who was convinced that astronomers were using the telescope to talk to God and wanted to stop this.