The distance to celestial objects is key to calculating their intrinsic properties like mass and luminosity. Distance, unfortunately, is also one of the most difficult parameters to meas...

Cambridge, MA - Stars form when gravity pulls together material within giant clouds of gas and dust. But gravity isn't the only force at work. Both turbulence and magnetic fields battl...

New stars regularly appear in the night sky as the gas and dust in giant interstellar clouds gradually coalesce under the influence of gravity. The process of making stars, however, is i...

A software application based on an algorithm created by a NASA challenge has the potential to increase the number of new asteroid discoveries by amateur astronomers.Analysis of images tak...

Globular clusters are gravitationally bound ensembles of stars, as many as a million stars in some cases, grouped in roughly spherical clusters with diameters as small as only tens of lig...

Cambridge, MA - "The Dynamic Sun," a new exhibit conceived, designed and built by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), has just opened at the Smithsoni...

Alyssa A. Goodman, Harvard professor of astronomy and research associate of the Smithsonian Institution, has been selected the 2015 Scientist of the Year, part of the Harvard Foundation A...

In 1969, the astrophysicists Rashid Sunyaev and Yakov Zel'dovich realized that the then recently discovered cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) would be distorted by hot cosmic g...

It's a little known fact that three-quarters of a mile from the South Pole lie some of Earth's most powerful telescopes. Operated all year round, they are engaged in one of the great scie...

Dust particles smaller than about a wavelength of light are abundant in our solar system, created by collisions between asteroids and from the evaporation of comets. As they scatter sunli...