Cambridge, MA - Astronomers have discovered a transiting exoplanet with the longest known year. Kepler-421b circles its star once every 704 days. In comparison, Mars orbits our Sun onc...

Our Milky Way galaxy is a barred spiral galaxy, a flattened disk of stars, gas and dust about 100,000 light-years in diameter containing several hundred billion stars. About 0.5% of the...

The universe contains some galaxies more than a thousand times brighter than our own Milky Way galaxy. Many of them are practically invisible at optical wavelengths because the star form...

Cambridge, MA - Defining what makes a star "Sun-like" is as difficult as defining what makes a planet "Earth-like." A solar twin should have a temperature, mass, and spectral type simi...

Einstein's Theory of General Relativity predicts that accelerated masses emit gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time. Even though gravitational waves have yet to be detected direct...

Astronomers in the past decade have been able to examine some of the key physical processes underway in early stages of stellar gestation, thanks in part to submillimeter and infrared tel...

The nuclei of most galaxies contain a massive black hole. In our Milky Way, for example, the nuclear black hole contains about four million solar masses of material, and in other galaxies...

The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) Organization is partnering with The University of Texas at Austin McDonald Observatory to present a new teacher workshop curriculum that will educate te...

Cambridge, MA - Ten years ago, eight antennas on the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawai'i, united to form a telescope unlike any other. Since then the Submillimeter Array (SMA) has examined th...

Cambridge, MA - A mysterious X-ray signal has been found in a detailed study of galaxy clusters using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton. One intriguing possibility ...