![]() ![]() “Initially, we thought this is going to be challenging, however, we didn’t really know that this is going to be that challenging,” Lee says. The team had to create something that’s never been made to see something that’s never been seen – dark energy. “It is probably the most difficult optical system that humans ever made,” says Lee, the project’s head engineer. Hanshin Lee, John Good, and Herman Kriel of the McDonald Observatory have been working on the undertaking ever since, along with dozens of collaborators from UT Austin and the University of Arizona.Īll three of them describe the project as a huge milestone in the observatory’s work. Last week, the mirrors arrived in West Texas at the University of Texas’ McDonald Observatory near Fort Davis, brought in by police escort. No such mirrors had ever been created until now. That’s the mysterious energy many scientists theorize the universe is largely made up of. Gibson's seen these "fireballs" before, but never one this big, and he says this one was rare mostly because of how bright it was, and of course, it was bright because it was big.Įstimates from astronomers at the McDonald put the meteor at size of about 4' in diameter, and it was likely traveling at speeds anywhere from 30,000 - 50,000 mph.This story originally appeared on Marfa Public Radio.Īlmost seven years ago, teams of engineers and scientists began designing mirrors for a telescope to study the universe’s dark energy. ![]() Video of the fireball was captured at a Modest Mouse concert in Austin "I went nuts when I saw that one," he says. Gibson's pretty used to seeing meteors, but this time was different. "It was at least as bright as the full moon." "A colleague who was facing towards me witnessed my shadow being cast by the light of the meteor," he says. Gibson says that glowing tail stayed in the sky for a long time - a few seconds - and he says this meteor was much brighter than your average shooting star. "At this point it had a glowing tail, and the green flash was about the size of my thumb held up at arm's length," he says. This video from a McDonald Observatory camera shows the flash from the meteor reflecting off the Hobby-Eberly Telescope dome. "As it lost altitude it sort of deepened in color from yellow-orange to a red-orange, and as it approached the mountaintops the bulk of the meteor flashed bright green. "It was dropping almost perpendicular to the ground," Gibson says. He hosts star parties and other viewing events at the McDonald, and Saturday night saw what he describes as a "yellow-orange streak" falling across the sky. One of them was Kelly Gibson, the observatory's public affairs specialist. The meteor was even spotted in New Mexico, and a few lucky West Texans got to see it under pitch black skies at a McDonald Observatory star party. ![]() NASA later confirmed the object was what's called a "fireball" - the (very technical) name given to extremely bright meteors that appear brighter than the planet Venus in the night sky. Reports of a massive, greenish-yellow streak of light poured in from San Antonio to Houston, from Terlingua to Midland-Odessa. Last Saturday, people across Texas reported seeing a massive ball of light streak across the night sky just before 9 pm. ![]()
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