McDonald Observatory

Travel & Outdoors |
January 9, 2014

Afraid of Losing the Dark

The McDonald Observatory, celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary this year, forges ahead with groundbreaking research and crusades to keep the night skies of West Texas pristine and unadulterated.

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Travel & Outdoors |
January 20, 2013

Marfa Best Western

In Donald Judd’s last interview before his death, in 1994, the artist explained that he’d first come to Marfa two decades earlier because he “just wanted a place in the Southwest for the summertime.” Whether he intended it or not, this far West Texas town has since become the

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Feature |
March 31, 2008

The Final Frontier

Karl Gebhardt and Gary Hill, two astronomers from the University of Texas at Austin, are racing to solve one of the greatest mysteries in science: What is dark energy? How does it work? Can it explain the origins of the universe? There’s only one problem. Dark energy may not actually

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