Astrophysics Student's Baked Treats Are Out of this World
When Harvard Ph.D. student Claire Lamman isn't helping map the universe, there's a good chance she might be baking a piece of it.
Harvard, Smithsonian Astronomers Help Capture First Image of Black Hole’s Magnetic Fields
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Cambridge, MA – Astronomers have now obtained a new view of the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy M87. Images released today by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaborati...
Cold Molecular Clouds as Cosmic Ray Detectors
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The ionization of the neutral gas in an interstellar molecular cloud plays a key role in the cloud’s evolution, helping to regulate the heating and cooling processes, the chemistry and mo...
Scientists Uncover Warehouse-Full of Complex Molecules Never before Seen in Space
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Cambridge, MA - Scientists have discovered a vast, previously unknown reservoir of new aromatic material in a cold, dark molecular cloud by detecting individual polycyclic aromatic hydroc...
The Circumnuclear Starburst Ring in Infrared Ultraluminous Galaxies
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Ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs), powered by starburst activity and often with supermassive black holes accreting material at their nuclei, contain large reservoirs of molecular g...
Astronomers Detect a Black Hole on the Move
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Cambridge, MA - Scientists have long theorized that supermassive black holes can wander through space—but catching them in the act has proven difficult.
Now, researchers at the Center f...
A Giant, Sizzling Planet May be Orbiting the Star Vega
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Cambridge, MA - The research, published this month in The Astronomical Journal, was led by Spencer Hurt, an astronomy undergraduate student at the University of Colorado Boulder. Hurt con...
Deciphering the Accretion Disk Structure of an X-ray Binary System
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The binary star system Her X-1 consists of a 1.5 solar-mass neutron star – the super-dense, collapsed remnant of a massive star – in orbit around the 2.2 solar-mass star, HZ Herculis. Loc...
Engineering Marvel: Sixth Mirror Cast for Giant Magellan Telescope
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Cambridge, MA - Fabrication of the sixth of seven mirrors for the Giant Magellan Telescope has begun. The mirrors will allow astronomers to see further into the universe and with more det...
The Distance to the North Polar Spur
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One of the largest structures in the Milky Way galaxy, the North Polar Spur, was discovered at radio and X-ray wavelengths. The Spur is a giant ridge of bright emission that rises roughly...