Cambridge, MA - How did the universe begin? And what came before the Big Bang? Cosmologists have asked these questions ever since discovering that our universe is expanding. The answer...

The search for exoplanets via the radial velocity technique has been underway for nearly 30 years. The method searches for wobbles in a star's motion caused by the presence of orbiting bo...

The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) astronomy software has a new institutional home: the American Astronomical Society (AAS). This follows a vote by the Society's governing board at the 227th A...

Stars like the Sun begin their lives as cold, dense cores of dust and gas that collapse under the influence of gravity until nuclear fusion is ignited. These cores contain hundreds to th...

The space between stars is not empty, but contains an abundance of diffuse material, about 5-10% of the total mass of our galaxy (excluding dark matter). Most of the material is gas, pred...

Kissimmee, FL - Globular star clusters are extraordinary in almost every way. They're densely packed, holding a million stars in a ball only about 100 light-years across on average. Th...

This week, the American Astronomical Society is meeting in Kissimmee, Florida. Often described as the Super Bowl of Astronomy," these meetings include announcements of new discoveries, sc...

On December 4, 2015, Owen Gingerich was awarded a gold medal by Krzysztof Ostrowski, the visiting vice-rector of the Pultusk Academy, the newest university in Poland. Gingerich received t...

The center of our Milky Way galaxy, about twenty-five thousand light years from Earth, is invisible to us in optical light because of the extensive amounts of absorbing, intervening dust....

We're pleased to announce that the full schedule of upcoming public programs is now available. This spring's Observatory Night talks will examine some of astronomy's biggest mysteries, li...