The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian now offers virtual tours of two popular facilities on campus: the Great Refractor and the Plate Stacks. Both tours allow visitors t...

Star formation in the Milky Way primarily occurs in long, dense filaments of gas and dust that stretch along the spiral arms. Dubbed "bones" because they delineate the galaxy's densest sk...

One of the most puzzling discoveries in cosmology is the accelerated expansion of the universe, which points to the existence of fundamental physics beyond what established physical laws ...

Cambridge, MA -- In January 1999, scientists observed mysterious motions within a solar flare. Unlike typical flares that showed bright energy erupting outwards from the Sun, this solar ...

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world's largest general scientific society, has elected Belinda J. Wilkes from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard &a...

Gamma-rays are the most energetic known form of electromagnetic radiation, with each gamma-ray being at least one hundred thousand times more energetic than an optical light photon. Very ...

Cambridge, MA -- The Earth sits in a 1,000-light-year-wide void surrounded by thousands of young stars — but how did those stars form?

A recently installed wheelchair ramp at the Harvard Astronomy Lab and Clay Telescope moves the lab a bit closer to its goal of ensuring the study of the cosmos is an option for all. ...

One of the characteristic features of modern cosmology is its description of how galaxies evolve: via a hierarchical process of colliding and merging with other systems. Nowhere in the un...

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, TESS, was launched in 2018 with the goal of discovering small planets around the Sun’s nearest neighbor stars. TESS has so far discovered 172 co...