Tag Archive for 'HETDEX'

An enormous halo of hydrogen gas found in HETDEX data and superimposed over its location as seen in deep imaging from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope; present 11.3 billion years ago, this system glows from the combined light of many galaxies within it, with the brightest region represented in red. Image credit: Erin Mentuch Cooper, HETDEX / NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI.

Astronomers Find Vast Reservoirs of Hydrogen around Early Galaxies

Apr 6, 2026 by News Staff

Astronomers with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) have detected enormous hydrogen halos, called Lyman-alpha nebulae, around more...

Section of the Line Intensity Map created by charting the distribution and concentration of excited hydrogen (via the Lyman alpha wavelength) in the Universe around 10 billion years ago. The stars mark where HETDEX has found galaxies. The inset simulates the structure present in this map once it is zoomed in on and background noise is removed from the data. Image credit: Maja Lujan Niemeyer / Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics / HETDEX / Chris Byrohl / Stanford University.

Astronomers Find Hidden Structures in Early Universe

Mar 5, 2026 by News Staff

Using spectral data from the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory, astronomers have produced the most detailed 3D map yet of faint cosmic structures...