The universe was created 13.73 billion years ago in a blaze of light -- the big bang. We also think that, about 380,000 years later, after matter (mostly hydrogen atoms) had cooled enoug...

New research from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveals that asteroids somewhat near Earth, termed near-Earth objects, are a mixed bunch, with a surprisingly wide array of compositions. ...

Cambridge, MA NASA's Kepler Mission has discovered the first confirmed planetary system with more than one planet transiting the same star.Today's announcement of the discovery of the tw...

A beautiful new image of two colliding galaxies has been released by NASA's Great Observatories. The Antennae galaxies, located about 62 million light years from Earth, are shown in this ...

A "super-Earth" is a planet around another star (an "exoplanet") whose mass is less than about ten times that of the Earth. Of the 480 or so extrasolar planets now known, most have masses...

Cambridge, MA Tight double-star systems might not be the best places for life to spring up, according to a new study using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The infrared observat...

Near Earth Objects (NEOs) are asteroids or comets whose orbits sometimes take them close to the earth's orbit. An NEO could therefore someday collide with the earth -- and there are almos...

Observatory Night lectures will take place on the third Thursday of the month from August to November. Topics will include the search forextraterrestrial intelligence, the formation of th...

The supermassive black holes that lie at the centers of galaxies can spawn tremendous bipolar jets of atomic particles. These outflows, discovered at radio wavelengths, are thought to be...

The Perseids are certainly the best known, if not the most active, meteor shower of the year. The experience of watching them, however, can vary widely. Of course the local weather can ma...