A Black Hole Unmasked
Black holes are among the most amazing and bizarre predictions of Einstein's theory of gravity. A black hole is thought to be point-like in dimension, but it is surrounded by an imaginar...
NASA's Chandra Adds to Black Hole Birth Announcement
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Cambridge, MA
New details about the birth of a famous black hole that took place millions of years ago have been uncovered, thanks to a team of scientists who used data from NASA's Chand...
A Serendipitous Gravitational Lens
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The path traveled by a light beam will bend in the presence of matter. This remarkable prediction, reached by Einstein in his theory of general relativity, was confirmed by observations o...
The Water Reservoir in a Young Planetary System
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Astronomers once thought that the process of star formation was more-or-less controlled by the simple coalescence of material by gravity,leading eventually to a new star. But they have ...
City Lights Could Reveal E.T. Civilization
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Cambridge, MA
In the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, astronomers have hunted for radio signals and ultra-short laser pulses. In a new paper, Avi Loeb (Harvard-Smithsonian Cente...
Water and Ammonia Factories
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Complex molecules, including many organic species, exist in a wide range of environments in the cosmos, and are especially abundant in giant molecular clouds of gas and dust where new sta...
Experience "The Evolving Universe" Exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History
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The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., has opened its newest temporary exhibition, "The Evolving Universe." Breathtaking full-color photographs of the ...
The High Energy Crab
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The Crab Nebula is the remnant of a supernova. Its precursor star exploded in 1054 AD in an event that was recorded by Chinese and (quite probably) Anasazi Indian astronomers. It is call...
Rendezvous with a Near Earth Object
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One of the most accessible goals for human spaceflight is a rendezvous with a Near Earth Object (NEO). NEOs are asteroids or comets whose orbits take them close to the earth's orbit. An N...
Observatory Night Recognizes 70th Anniversary of "Sky & Telescope"
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On Thursday, October 20, the Center for Astrophysics will hold a special Observatory Night presentation to celebrate the 70th anniversary of "Sky & Telescope" magazine. The event star...