Cambridge, MA Astronomers have found the lowest mass white dwarf known in our galaxy: a Saturn-sized ball of helium containing only about one-fifth the mass of the Sun. In addition, they...

Astronomers have come to realize that black holes are fairly common in the universe. Massive black holes -- ones that contain millions or even billions of solar masses of material -- are ...

An "exoplanet" is an extra-solar planet -- a planet orbiting a star other than our own Sun. Over 120 exoplanets have been discovered in the past decade in a scientific revolution that has...

The small star with the long name of 2MASS-J1207334-393254 is about 179 light-years from Earth. It has a mass of only about twenty-four Jupiters, too little to be able to ignite hydrogen ...

Cambridge, MA A unique collaboration created by Harvard's Initiative for Innovative Computing (IIC) has brought together astronomers, medical imaging specialists, and software engineers ...

Cambridge, MA John P. Huchra of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) has been elected the next President of the American Astronomical Society. "I'm honored and excited t...

Cambridge, MA Even though the sun is the closest star to Earth and has been studied for hundreds of years, it still holds surprises. The recently launched Hinode spacecraft is one of the...

Globular clusters are roughly spherical ensembles of stars, as many as a million stars in some cases, that are gravitationally bound together in groups whose diameters can be as small as ...

Quasars are galaxies with massive black holes at their cores around which vast amounts of energy are being radiated -- quasars are among the most powerful energy sources known. Streaming ...

When a supernova explodes, its blast sweeps up surrounding gas with a powerful shock wave. A typical supernova shock has more energy in the motions of its material than the Sun will emit ...