Observatory Night lectures will take place on the third Thursday of the month from September through November. We will also hold one on the first Thursday of December. These public talks ...

The Pipe Nebula is a prominent dark molecular cloud located about 430 light-years from us. It contains about ten thousand solar-masses of material, making it one of the closest giant mol...

On September 10, 2014, NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) satellite observed its largest solar flare since launching in June of 2013. This was an X1.6 class flare based o...

Cambridge, MA - Dr. Philip M. Sadler of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) has been awarded the 2014 Technology and Innovation Award from the International Planetari...

A blazar is a galaxy whose central, supermassive black hole shines intensely as it accretes material from the surrounding region. Although black hole accretion happens in many galaxies a...

Cambridge, MA - Before iPhones and laptops there were human computers, some of whom worked at the Harvard College Observatory. Women like Henrietta Swan Leavitt, Williamina Fleming, an...

The Board of Directors of the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization is pleased to announce the appointment of Edward I. Moses, Ph.D., as President of their organization. Dr. Moses, former...

The evolution of a star depends crucially on its initial birth mass and composition, and developments in its early lifetime. These initial properties determine, for example, the producti...

Einstein's general theory of relativity predicts that accelerating masses should radiate gravity waves in a roughly similar way that accelerating electrical charges radiate electromagneti...

On October 6-8, 2014, the Smithsonian Institution and the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization will host a three-day conference to improve our understanding of time-domain astrophysics a...