McDonald Observatory relocates to Austin — at 7% the size

AUSTIN (KXAN) — A new exhibit at the Texas Science and Natural History Museum is bringing the McDonald Observatory to the University of Texas campus.

UNITED STATES – AUGUST 29: McDonald Observatory, operated by the University of Texas at Austin, and located in Fort Davis, Texas (Photo by Carol M. Highsmith/Buyenlarge/Getty Images)

The “Big Eye on Dark Skies” exhibit opened this week on the third floor of the museum, bringing with it a scale model of one of the world’s most powerful telescopes.

The Hobby-Eberly telescope is powered by a 10-meter wide mirror, capable of collecting light from 11 billion years ago. The mirror in the model, 7% the size of the real one, collects light from canned bulbs hanging from a darkened ceiling.

“It is telling the story about this amazing, very large telescope that is out in Fort Davis,” said Carolyn Connerat, managing director of the museum.

Bringing the stars to the museum

Located on the Texas Wildlife floor of the museum, the team said it is a perfect fit because it’s studying the very stuff that makes us all.

“This telescope is located out in the Davis mountains, which is technically called a sky island, and so that’s where there’s a lot of wildlife,” Connerat said.

According to McDonald Observatory Director Taft Armandroff, the Hobby-Eberly telescope is one of the largest in the world. Images in the exhibit compare it to the dome of the Texas capitol, roughly the same size.

The distant cosmos

“We primarily use it to study cosmology, the study of the universe as a whole,” Armandroff said.

North America, USA, Fort Davis, Texas, McDonald Observatory Mount Locke, Harlan J. Smith Telescope, Otto Struve Telescope and large Format Imaging Telescope. (Photo by: Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Signage along the exhibit hides a secret. Each sign is the same size as one of the panels in the real telescope mirrors. The signs describe the purpose of the telescope and some of its discoveries.

Armandroff hopes by showing off the model, originally built as part of the April 8 eclipse celebration, people will want to visit the real Hobey-Eberly and the McDonald Observatory.

“It’s easy to get to the Texas Museum of Science and Natural History right here in Austin, right on campus, whereas it’s more challenging to get to the observatory. Maybe some people will come here and see this, and they’ll be motivated to come to West Texas and see the rest of the observatory,” Armandroff said.