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The McDonald Observatory is an astronomical observatory located near the unincorporated community of Fort Davis in Jeff Davis County, Texas, United States. The facility is located on Mount Locke in the Davis Mountains of West Texas, with additional facilities on Mount Fowlkes, approximately to the northeast.〔 The site is property of the University of Texas at Austin, and is primarily funded through two special items in the Texas state budget: the McDonald Observatory line item and the CASA (Center for Advanced Studies in Astronomy) line item. The observatory produces ''StarDate'', a daily syndicated radio program consisting of short segments related to astronomy that airs on many National Public Radio affiliates. The observatory also produces a similar program, ''Universo'', in Spanish. ==History== The McDonald Observatory was originally endowed by the Texas banker William Johnson McDonald (1844–1926), who left about $1,000,000 - the bulk of his fortune - to the University of Texas to endow an astronomical observatory. The provision of the will was challenged by McDonald's relatives, but after a long legal fight, the University received about $800,000 from the estate and construction began at Mt. Locke. The then-unnamed Otto Struve Telescope was dedicated on May 5, 1939, and at that time was the second largest telescope in the world. McDonald Observatory was operated under contract by the University of Chicago until the 1960s, when control was transferred to the University of Texas at Austin under the direction of Harlan J. Smith. Research today at the McDonald Observatory encompasses a wide variety of topics and projects, including planetary systems, stars and stellar spectroscopy, the interstellar medium, extragalactic astronomy, and theoretical astronomy.〔 Directors〔 * Otto Struve (1932–1950) * Gerard Peter Kuiper (Sept. 1947–Dec. 1949, Sept. 1957–Mar. 1959) * Bengt Georg Daniel Strömgren (Jan. 1951–Aug. 1957) * William Wilson Morgan (Apr. 1959–Aug. 1963) * Harlan James Smith (Sept. 1963–1989) * Frank N. Bash (1989–2003) * David Lambert (2003–2014) * Taft Armandroff (2014–present) 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「McDonald Observatory」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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