The universe was born about 13.7 billion years ago in the big bang. The Sun and its system of planets formed about five billion years ago. What happened, then, during that long, interveni...

The discovery of planets around other stars has led to the realization that alien solar systems often have bizarre features - at least they seem bizarre to us because they were so unexpec...

Cambridge, MA The exploding stars known as Type Ia supernovae serve an important role in measuring the universe, and were used to discover the existence of dark energy. They're bright en...

Dr. Mark Reid has been awarded the 2012 Jansky Lectureship. Reid is being honored for his pioneering work in Very Long Baseline Interferometry as applied to numerous key problems in astro...

Black holes can come in a wide range of masses. Some, with only about one solar mass, result from the supernova death of a massive star, while those at the center of galaxies (called supe...

Cambridge, MA When it comes to scary things in the universe, it's hard to get much scarier than supermassive black holes. These gigantic, invisible menaces lurk in the centers of galaxie...

Quasars are thought to be galaxies whose bright nuclei contain massive black holes around which disks are actively accreting matter. The accretion process releases vast amounts of energy,...

Become an astronomer for a day! Enjoy telescope tours, interactive multimedia exhibits, hands-on activities, live demonstrations, and our ever-popular Scientist Cafe, where visitors can c...

Professor David Charbonneau has won the Sackler Prize in Physics for 2012. This award recognizes Charbonneau's seminal contributions to our understanding of extra-solar planets. The Raym...

Seyfert galaxies are similar to normal galaxies like our own Milky Way except in one critical respect: their nuclei are fantastically bright, in extreme instances as luminous as 100 bill...