Hobby-Eberly Telescope
Hobby–Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory October 28, 2006
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| Organisation | McDonald Observatory |
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| Location(s) | Mount Fowlkes, Davis Mountains, West Texas |
| Coordinates | 30°40′53.2″N 104°00′53.0″W / 30.681444°N 104.014722°WCoordinates: 30°40′53.2″N 104°00′53.0″W / 30.681444°N 104.014722°W |
| Altitude | 2,026 m (6,647 ft) |
| Wavelength | 350–1800 nm (visible) |
| Built | 1994–1997 |
| First light | 10–11 December 1996 |
| Telescope style | Prime focus, segmented |
| Diameter | 10 m |
| Secondary diameter | 1 m (corrector) |
| Tertiary diameter | 1 m (corrector) |
| Angular resolution | ≈1.5″ FWHM |
| Collecting area | 77.6 m² |
| Focal length | 13.08 m |
| Mounting | Fixed primary, Arecibo style (The telescope can rotate in azimuth, but not during observations.) |
| Website | www.as.utexas.edu |
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The Hobby–Eberly Telescope (HET) is a 10-meter (30-foot) aperture telescope located at the McDonald Observatory. It is one of the largest optical telescopes in the world and combines a number of features that differentiate it from most telescope designs, resulting in greatly lowered construction costs. For instance, the primary mirror is constructed from 91 hexagonal segments, which is less expensive than manufacturing a single large primary. Furthermore, the telescope's main mirror is fixed at a 55° angle and can rotate around its base. A target is tracked by moving the instruments at the focus of the telescope; this provides access to about 70–81% of the sky at its location and allows a single target to be tracked for up to two hours. The telescope is named for former Texas Lieutenant-Governor Bill Hobby and for Robert E. Eberly, a Penn State benefactor.
Three instruments are available to analyze the light from the targets. All three instruments are spectrographs. The instruments work at high, medium and low spectral resolution. The low-resolution spectrograph is housed at the prime focus, while the medium and high-resolution spectrographs reside in the basement and the light is fed into them via a fiber-optic cable.
Since achieving first light in 1996, the telescope has been used for a wide variety of studies ranging from the Solar System to stars in our galaxy and studies of other galaxies. The telescope has been used successfully to find planets orbiting around other stars by measuring radial velocities as precisely as 1 m/s. Using the low-resolution spectrograph, the telescope has been used to identify Type Ia supernovae to measure the acceleration of the universe. The telescope has also been used to measure the rotation of individual galaxies. The telescope was upgraded for use in the Hobby–Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX), which will provide the first observations to allow narrowing of the list of possible explanations for dark energy.
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