Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET)
An 11-meter reflector at an altitude of 1,980 m on Mount Fowlkes, Texas,
opened in 1997, and designed mainly for spectroscopy
rather than imaging. Its mirror is made from 91 hexagonal segments each
1 m across. Permanently angled at 55°, the telescope is free to move
in azimuth. The HET, named after two benefactors, is part of the McDonald
Observatory, and is jointly owned by the University of Texas, Pennsylvania
State University, Stanford University, the Ludwig Maximilian University
in Munich, and the Georg-August University in Göttingen. Among its uses
are radial velocity measurements of nearby
stars in the search for extrasolar planets.
Related category
• OBSERVATORIES
AND TELESCOPES
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