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Meet the Universe’s Earliest Confirmed Black Hole: A Monster at the Dawn of Time

An international team of astronomers, led by UT Austin’s Cosmic Frontier Center, has identified the most distant black hole ever confirmed. It and the galaxy it calls home, CAPERS-LRD-z9, are present 500 million years after the Big Bang. That places it 13.3 billion years into the past, when our universe was just three percent of its current age.

Help Renovate Our Visitors Center - Gifts Being Matched!

As our Frank N. Bash Visitors Center enters its third decade in service, we’ve started an extensive renovation of its public spaces. You are invited to be part of this transformative project by contributing to its funding. All gifts are currently being matched by sponsors!

Free Star Parties for Texas Educators in August

Texas educators and their families are invited to join McDonald Observatory for a free Star Party in August. Register with discount code TeachStars and bring your school ID for free admission.

The Universe’s Secret Harvest: UT Astronomers Shed Light on “the Cosmic Grapes”

Astronomers have discovered a remarkably clumpy rotating galaxy that existed just 900 million years after the Big Bang, shedding new light on how galaxies grew and evolved in the early universe. Nicknamed the "Cosmic Grapes," the galaxy appears to be composed of at least 15 massive star-forming clumps - far more than current theoretical models predict could exist within a single rotating disk at this early time.

Some Young Suns Align with Their Planet-forming Disks, Others Are Born Tilted

Sometimes, planets travel around their stars in a path that doesn't line up with that star's rotation. It is often thought that the cause is from the gravitational pull of other objects. However, if a star is born with a tilted protoplanetary disk - that is, the ring of gas and dust that eventually forms planets - that tilt may still be present in those planets' orbits billions of years later. New research has found that roughly one third of planetary systems with Sun-like stars start off this way.