Cambridge, MA - Recent science missions and results are bringing the search for life closer to home, and scientists at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) and th...

About seven and one-half billion years from now our sun will have converted most of its hydrogen fuel into helium through fusion, and then burned most of that helium into carbon and oxyge...

Cambridge, MA - Following extensive observations of stellar winds around cool evolved stars scientists have figured out how planetary nebulae get their mesmerizing shapes. The findings, p...

The GMTO Corporation has received a $17.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to accelerate the prototyping and testing of some of the most powerful optical and infra...

Planets form from the gas and dust in disks that surround young stars. Chemicals in the disk that evaporate easily, called volatiles, include important molecules like water, carbon monoxi...

Star formation in molecular clouds usually occurs in a two-step process.  Supersonic flows first compress the clouds into dense filaments light-years long, after which gravity collap...

Cambridge, MA - Using the power of supercomputers, an international team of researchers has zoomed in on the smallest clumps of dark matter in a virtual universe. Published today in Natur...

Cambridge, MA - Dr. Patrick (Pat) Slane of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) has been named the next Director of the Chandra X-ray Center (CXC), which controls...

An active galactic nucleus (AGN) is a supermassive black hole residing at the core of a galaxy that is accreting material. The accretion occurs in the vicinity of the hot torus around the...

Giant elliptical galaxies, the oldest known large galactic structures in the universe, have no spiral arms and little or no current star formation activity, but their central supermassive...