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If you are traveling out I-10 near Fort Davis, TX is the McDonald Observatory.

http://www.as.utexas.edu/mcdonald/
http://mcdonaldobservatory.org/


They have special programs available to the public with evening viewing.

Last year Tanuki64 asked a similar question, and I referred him to an anecdote from my senior year of physics undergrad. In 2004, I presented a similar idea to an astrophysicist in my department:

I wonder if "dark matter" is the result of gravitational interactions with galaxies in parallel universes. Suppose parallel universes exist in the same physical "space" we inhabit, and only interact with each other (and us) via gravity. The galaxies in different universes would then clump together, but their disks wouldn't necessarily be aligned. So the total gravity would appear similar to a spherical halo of dark matter. This would explain the too-high velocities of stars at the edges of galaxies and the too-high velocities of galaxies in superclusters.

In 2004, I didn't have enough experience to understand why that astrophysicist rejected my idea by saying that I was trying to explain something we don't understand by invoking something else that we understand even less. Several years later, though, I started to see some cracks in this idea:

2009-07-25 Update: I don't think my hypothesis is consistent with the Bullet cluster data.

2009-07-27 Update: Also, I wonder if galaxies in my imaginary parallel universes really would clump together. They'd certainly be gravitationally attracted to each other, but if each universe has roughly the same density of galaxies, they'd typically have a long way to fall towards each other. As a result, they'd be moving so fast that I doubt any damping mechanisms could have brought them to rest in ~13.7 billion years. But... what if they formed in the same place initially? That would make sense because supermassive black holes likely play a large role in proto-galaxy formation. Gravitational collapse in one universe would trigger collapses in other universes leading to galaxies with small relative velocities. But in that case, it seems like the disks would be aligned because disk formation probably doesn't involve a large percentage of actual physical collisions (any actual astronomers want to help me here?). I think this would result in the wrong velocity profile for stars versus distance from the center of the galaxy? Oh, and all these stars in different universes would cause gravitational lensing events to occur with a much greater frequency than has been observed by the OGLE. Galaxies with non-aligned disks would look even weirder- that implies imply lensing with bizarre relative velocities.

It could also explain that Dark Flow thing.

Perhaps. But given the above problems with such an idea, it's more likely that the Great Attractor is simply a massive supercluster in our own universe, even if it's already passed over the horizon.

It's a damn shame more people can't see the milky way, it's really an awesome sight. I went most of my life without seeing it in anything but photos. Took an excursion to the McDonald observatory and my first view of it really took my breath away. You KNOW there are a lot of stars, you KNOW space is big, really big, but it was almost overwhelming to lay back in the grass and see so much of the universe above me. If you've never seen it, you owe it to yourself to get a peek before you die.

Ask these guys and their friends for help - it IS allowed by the rules.

Well, there are two reasons. One is that the McDonald Observatory, and the largest telescope in the continental U.S. is out there, and their Light Pollution Program has successfully reduced stray light for hundreds of miles.

The other reason is that there just ain't that much stuff out in West Texas. ;-)

The original article can be found here:
http://mcdonaldobservatory.org/news/releases/2002/ 1203.html

That particular article seems to be almost as light on details, but at least it's from the horse's mouth.

For another interesting read, try this article about a grad student there who believes they caught a black hole consuming an entire star. Pretty cool stuff.

I would assume the "tilt" of the light would be polarization. Diffraction doesn't really make much sense in this context (diffraction is really only measurable if the size of the object is within a few orders of magnitude of the size of the radiation, which is not the case here) Refraction doesnt' make sense, because that would be gravitational lensing which really doesn't tell you anything except the mass of the object. The planet's atmosphere wouldn't be big enough to cause a measurable refraction from our perspective, so I think we're pretty much left with the idea that it must be polarization. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm studying the theoretical aspects of astrophysics, not the observational aspects).

Cheers,
Justin

The original article can be found here:
http://mcdonaldobservatory.org/news/releases/2002/ 1203.html

That particular article seems to be almost as light on details, but at least it's from the horse's mouth.

For another interesting read, try this article about a grad student there who believes they caught a black hole consuming an entire star. Pretty cool stuff.

I would assume the "tilt" of the light would be polarization. Diffraction doesn't really make much sense in this context (diffraction is really only measurable if the size of the object is within a few orders of magnitude of the size of the radiation, which is not the case here) Refraction doesnt' make sense, because that would be gravitational lensing which really doesn't tell you anything except the mass of the object. The planet's atmosphere wouldn't be big enough to cause a measurable refraction from our perspective, so I think we're pretty much left with the idea that it must be polarization. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm studying the theoretical aspects of astrophysics, not the observational aspects).

Cheers,
Justin