Over the past two decades, very high energy gamma ray emission has been detected coming from the direction of the Milky Way's Galactic Center. The Galactic Center hosts many potential sit...

Planets form as the dust grains in a protoplanetary disk grow into pebbles and then finally into planets. Because small dust grains interact with gas (via the drag it imparts), the gas in...

Messier 82 (M82) is a luminous infrared galaxy about twelve million light-years away from the Milky Way. Its burst of star formation powers the radiation and drives a bipolar superwind th...

When a star like our Sun gets to be old, in another seven billion years or so, it will no longer be able to sustain burning its nuclear fuel. With only about half of its mass remaining it...

Cambridge, MA -- Astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian have helped detect the clear presence of a moon-forming region around an exoplanet — a planet outsi...

Cambridge, MA - At radio wavelengths, Centaurus A is one of the largest and brightest objects in the night sky, showing extended jet and giant radio lobes. After it was identified as one...

Astronomers refer to all the elements heavier than helium as "metals," even elements that are typically found in gaseous form. In the big bang only hydrogen and helium (and a trace of lit...

The supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, Sagittarius A* (“SgrA*), is by far the closest such object to us, about 27 thousand light-years away. Although it is not...

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian has welcomed two new summer interns thanks to a partnership between the National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP) and the Smithso...

Galaxy clusters are unique laboratories for the study of large-scale magnetic fields. The turbulent intracluster medium is permeated by a ubiquitous magnetic field on scales ranging from ...