Over the past decade, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and other modern, giant telescopes have opened a new era in observational cosmology. By staring for long times at so-called "dark fi...

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An interactive tool to characterize and illustrate the interior structure of exoplanets is now available at http://www.astrozeng.com under the tab Exoplanet Models. This tool is useful fo...

Our Milky Way galaxy has a super-massive black hole at its core, about four million solar-masses in size.

Cambridge, MA The Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, has posed an enduring mystery. Why is it so hot? The Sun's visible surface is only 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, but as you move outward...

As a new star develops within a molecular cloud, a circumstellar disk forms naturally from the rotating gas and dust. These disks are called "protoplanetary disks" because astronomers ex...

NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) spacecraft launched at 10:27 p.m. EDT Wednesday, June 26 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. Its primary goal is to understand how h...

The Orion Nebula, one of the most famous sights in the night sky, contains several clusters of hot young stars, whose intense ultraviolet radiation prompts the gas and dust to glow bright...

Cambridge, MA - All stars begin their lives in groups. Most stars, including our Sun, are born in small, benign groups that quickly fall apart. Others form in huge, dense swarms that s...

The Smithsonian is delighted to be included in this year's Aspen Ideas Festival (June 26 – July 2 in Aspen, Colo.) which will gather some of the most interesting thinkers and leaders from...