Cambridge, MA Hubble's iconic images include many shots of cosmic clouds of gas and dust called nebulae. For example, the famous "Pillars of Creation" mark the birthplace of new stars wi...

Cambridge, MA In an exercise that demonstrates the power of a multiwavelength investigation using diverse facilities, astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA)...

Cambridge, MA Common wisdom holds that we can never see a black hole because nothing can escape it - not even light. Fortunately, black holes aren't completely black. As gas is pulled in...

Cambridge, MA What did the very first stars look like? How did they live and die? Astronomers have ideas, but no proof. The first stars are so distant and formed so long ago that they ar...

Cambridge, MA Newborn stars are difficult to photograph. They tend to hide in the nebulous stellar nurseries where they formed, enshrouded by thick layers of dust. Now, Smithsonian astro...

Cambridge, MA The U.S. could be in for quite a show tonight! Astronomers are predicting that the Northern Lights will shine on and off, periodically coating the northern sky in brilliant...

Cambridge, MA The most massive stars in our galaxy weigh as much as 100 small stars like the Sun. How do such monsters form? Do they grow rapidly by swallowing smaller protostars within ...

Cambridge, MA A speeding, superdense neutron star somehow got a powerful "kick" that is propelling it completely out of our Milky Way Galaxy into the cold vastness of intergalactic space...

Cambridge, MA Mother Nature has ended what she began 12 days ago. A forest fire sparked by lightning in the Santa Rita Mountains south of Tucson, Arizona, which spread to within a mile o...

Cambridge, MA Every rule has an exception. One rule in astronomy, supported by considerable evidence, states that dust disks around newborn stars disappear in a few million years. Most l...