Cambridge, MA A once-faint comet has made a sudden leap from obscurity to center stage. Comet 17P/Holmes, now visible to northern hemisphere residents, increased its brightness by a fact...

The first stars in the universe are thought to have begun forming about one billion years after the big bang, as the neutral hydrogen atoms in the expanding universe gathered together int...

Beyond the orbit of Neptune lies a vast expanse of space sprinkled with smaller, icy bodies; this region is known as the Kuiper Belt. Named after the Dutch-born American astronomer Gerard...

Cambridge, MA Cosmic Questions, a national traveling exhibition created by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), has found a permanent home at the 'Imiloa Astronomy Center of ...

Cambridge, MA Nearly a decade ago, astronomers discovered the surprising existence of dark energy-a mysterious force that pushes galaxies apart and accelerates the expansion of the unive...

Astronomers think that most galaxies, including our own Milky Way, harbor massive black holes at their centers. These black holes can contain billions of solar masses of material, and are...

Cambridge, MA In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the start of the Space Age, an asteroid has been named "Astronautica." Minor planet number 100,000 (also known as 1982 SH1) was ch...

Once a star like the sun has consumed most of its hydrogen fuel, its outer layers swell up and cool off; the star becomes a "red giant." Our sun will evolve into a red giant star in an...

The Vela Molecular complex is a set of giant clouds of gas and dust that are not particularly well known to North Americans because they are in the direction of the southern hemisphere co...

Ten years ago this winter, two teams of astronomers, one led by CfA scientists, astonished the world with their results showing that the universe would expand forever. Soon afterwards th...