Star Birth in Far-Off Galaxies When you look at the sky, all the natural light you see ultimately comes from stars. Earth and everything on it owe their existence to previous generations...

The Sun, Up Close The “Dynamic Sun” exhibit at the Air & Space Museum is built from six 50-inch video monitors, making a total display 6 feet tall by 7 feet wide. This gives a grande...

A Map of the Cosmic Neighborhood As the universe expands, galaxies are getting ever farther apart on average. That means from our perspective, other galaxies appear to be moving away fro...

Cosmic Web and Cosmic History The observable universe contains around 100 billion large galaxies. These are not randomly scattered: they form filaments and other large structures that to...

Essential Tools for Professional Astronomers Computerized analysis is an essential step in the process of research for every professional astronomer and astrophysicist. That step can be ...

Cataloging the Stellar Graveyard Supernovas are among the brightest phenomena in the universe, briefly outshining whole galaxies before they fade. The relatively short duration of these ...

Surveying the X-ray Sky Many astronomical sources emit significant amounts of X-rays: matter swirling around black holes or neutron stars, hot plasma in galaxy clusters or near newborn s...

Project StatusThe DASCH project has been a herculean effort spanning two decades. In order to ensure that the plate scanning is brought to completion, and that the resulting data are arch...

An X-ray Catalog of Newborn Stars Stars are born inside dense clouds of gas that are opaque to optical light. However, newborn stars emit intense X-ray radiation which can pierce through...

Making Sense of MOOCs MOOCs differ from traditional in-person and ordinary online classes in two major areas: the large number of students they allow to enroll and the high attrition rat...