Craig Nance - McDonald Observatory
Our speaker on August 10 was Craig Nance, Superintendent of the McDonald Observatory. He is also a member of the Marfa Rotary Club. The McDonald Observatory is located in the Davis Mountains. There are no outside lights allowed, so one can see the Milky Way very well. The Observatory has 80-100,000 visitors a year and has the largest telescope in the world. Three nights a week they have public programs with 400-500 visitors per night. The best time to visit is mid July to mid Oct. The Observatory is named after William Johnson McDonald of Paris, Texas, who left his estate to UT to build a observatory for research and promoting astronomy. Mr. Nance showed us pictures taken with telescopes including the Hubble. He explained theories of the expansion of universe and talked about how the rebuilding of the Hobby Eberly telescope will help map out galaxies and study dark energy and determine what universe is made of. The Giant Magellan Telescope is also currently being built and will be world's largest. Mr. Nance also told us about exoplanets - 2000 have been found; another 4000 to be confirmed. Virtually all stars have planets. He described about how planets are found. The goal is to determine if there are habitable planets. To learn more about the Observatory go to mcdonaldobservatory.org.