Cambridge, MA - When Betelgeuse, a bright orange star in the constellation of Orion, lost more than two-thirds of its brightness in late 2019 and early 2020, astronomers were puzzled. W...

At the center of our Milky Way lies a supermassive black hole (SMBH) called Sagittarius A* (SgrA*). Supermassive black holes reside at the centers of most galaxies, and when they actively...

Forty years ago astronomers using sensitive new imaging techniques discovered a class of large, faint galaxies they named low surface brightness galaxies. Giant low surface brightness gal...

The prospects for life around low-mass, cool M-type stars have been extensively discussed because these stars are the most common ones in the galaxy, and they frequently host Earth-sized ...

Astrophysics senior Alessandra Canta is one of three Harvard students selected by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study to receive the 2021 Captain Jonathan Fay Prize. The winners we...

Star-forming regions in the Galaxy are distributed in a complex web of filaments. Clusters of stars are born within the densest parts of these structures, but soon after the stars form th...

A collection of the 3D objects from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is now available on a new platform from the Smithsonian Institution. This will allow greater access to these unique 3D...

On Thursday, May 27, 10 students in the Department of Astronomy will officially earn their doctoral degrees in astrophysics. 

Cambridge, MA — In 1983, astrophysicists at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) released a cosmic map using 2,400 galaxies. Now, CfA scientists are aiming to map...

The most luminous galaxies in the universe radiate a thousand times the energy of the Milky Way (or even more), most of it at infrared wavelengths. These galaxies are powered by the ultra...