http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/All CfA Newsen-us http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/fe201312.htmlMay 15, 2013: The Digital Access to a Sky Century @ Harvard (DASCH) project has made the first of 12 planned data releases. DASCH is digitally scanning the ~500,000 glass plate images covering the full sky and taken between 1885 and 1992. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/pr201312.htmlMay 13, 2013: Detecting alien worlds presents a significant challenge since they are small, faint, and close to their stars. The two most prolific techniques for finding exoplanets are radial velocity (looking for wobbling stars) and transits (looking for dimming stars). http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/pz201311.htmlMay 13, 2013: Ramesh Narayan has been elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - a private, non-profit society of distinguished scholars. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/pz201310.htmlMay 07, 2013: David Latham has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. The Academy is one of the nation's most prestigious honorary societies and a leading center for independent policy research. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/su201318.htmlMay 03, 2013: Everybody wants teachers to be knowledgeable, but there is little agreement on what kinds of knowledge are the most important. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/fe201309.htmlApril 30, 2013: Scientists have used Chandra to make a detailed study of an enormous cloud of hot gas enveloping two large, colliding galaxies. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/fe201307.htmlApril 26, 2013: Astronomy is the ultimate observational science. Humans have probably always looked skyward, noting the passage and patterns of the sun, moon, and stars. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/su201317.htmlApril 26, 2013: Magnetic field measurement techniques have long enabled scientists to probe the internal structure of biological and material samples. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/pz201308.htmlApril 23, 2013: Alex Dalgarno has been selected to receive the 2013 Franklin Institute Medal in Physics. Since 1824, the Franklin Institute has honored the greatest men and women of science, engineering, and technology. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/su201316.htmlApril 19, 2013: In the spring of the year 1006, one thousand and seven years ago this April, observers in China, Egypt, Iraq, Japan, Switzerland (and perhaps North America) reported seeing what might be the brightest stellar event in recorded history. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/pr201311.htmlApril 18, 2013: In our solar system, only one planet is blessed with an ocean: Earth. Our home world is a rare, blue jewel compared to the deserts of Mercury, Venus and Mars. But what if our Sun had not one but two habitable ocean worlds? http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/su201315.htmlApril 12, 2013: The universe was created about fourteen billion years ago in a blaze of light known as the big bang. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/su201313.htmlApril 05, 2013: Collisions between galaxies are common. Indeed, most galaxies have probably been involved in one or more encounters during their lifetimes. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/pr201310.htmlApril 02, 2013: Spiral galaxies are some of the most beautiful and photogenic residents of the universe. Our own Milky Way is a spiral. Our solar system and Earth reside somewhere near one of its filamentous arms. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/su201314.htmlMarch 29, 2013: At some stage after its birth in the big bang, the universe began to make galaxies. No one knows exactly when, or how, this occurred. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/fe201306.htmlMarch 27, 2013: Katherine Wyman of the CfA, began her Thursday night discussion, "Dark Cloud Encounters," by recalling a 2003 episode of the revived "Twilight Zone" television series called "Sunrise," during which the sun was blocked by a dark cloud, devastating the Earth's climate. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/pr201309.htmlMarch 26, 2013: Until now, supernovas came in two main "flavors." A core-collapse supernova is the explosion of a star about 10 to 100 times as massive as our sun, while a Type Ia supernova is the complete disruption of a tiny white dwarf. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/su201312.htmlMarch 22, 2013: Galaxies today come very roughly in two types: reddish, elliptically shaped collections of older stars, and bluer, spiral shaped objects dominated by young stars. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/fe201305.htmlMarch 15, 2013: In 2015, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will encounter the binary planet Pluto-Charon and its coterie of small satellites. Discovered in June 2005, the satellites Nix and Hydra orbit Pluto-Charon at distances roughly 40 times (Nix) and 55 times (Hydra) larger than the radius of Pluto. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/su201311.htmlMarch 15, 2013: The Sun glows with a surface temperature of about 5500 degrees Celsius. Meanwhile its hot outer layer (the corona) has a temperature of over a million degrees, and ejects a wind of charged particles at a rate equivalent to about one-millionth of the moon's mass each year. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/su201310.htmlMarch 08, 2013: IRAS 16293-2922B is a very young star - a protostar - perhaps only about ten thousand years old. Slightly smaller in mass than our Sun, it is still deeply embedded in its surrounding natal material, and apparently is even accreting some of that material onto a circumstellar disk that rings the protostar. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/pr201308.htmlMarch 07, 2013: The star Eta Carinae is ready to blow. 170 years ago, this 100-solar-mass object belched out several suns' worth of gas in an eruption that made it the second-brightest star after Sirius. That was just a precursor to the main event, since it will eventually go supernova. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/su201309.htmlMarch 01, 2013: There are currently 861 exoplanets (planets around other stars) according to the official exoplanet encyclopedia website. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/pr201307.htmlFebruary 27, 2013: Imagine a sphere more than 2 million miles across - eight times the distance from Earth to the Moon - spinning so fast that its surface is traveling at nearly the speed of light. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/fe201304.htmlFebruary 27, 2013: Imagine you built the biggest telescope in the world only to discover that its images were out of focus. It's happened before. And historically, whenever a telescope has gotten bigger, the problems have gotten bigger too. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/pr201306.htmlFebruary 25, 2013: Even dying stars could host planets with life - and if such life exists, we might be able to detect it within the next decade. This encouraging result comes from a new theoretical study of Earth-like planets orbiting white dwarf stars. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/su201308.htmlFebruary 22, 2013: An active galaxy is one whose nucleus contains a massive black hole that is vigorously accreting material. In the process, the nucleus typically ejects jets of particles and radiates brightly at many wavelengths, in particular at X-ray wavelengths. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/su201307.htmlFebruary 15, 2013: Astronomers in the 1960s were amazed to discover that molecular clouds in interstellar space sometimes produced natural masers (the radio wavelength analogs of lasers) that shine with bright, narrow beams of radiation. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/fe201303.htmlFebruary 12, 2013: The Grote Reber Foundation has announced that Professor Jim Moran will be the recipient of the 2013 Grote Reber Gold Medal. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2013/su201306.htmlFebruary 08, 2013: Supermasssive black holes, having masses of millions or even billions of suns, are found at the nuclei of galaxies. In dramatic cases like quasars, these black holes are responsible for spectacular phenomena like the ejection of narrow jets of particles at nearly the speed of light.