http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/All Newsen-us http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/su200947.htmlNovember 20, 2009: The famous Orion Nebula is the closest nursery of massive young stars to the earth, and is about 1300 light-years away. The nebula is part of a giant molecular cloud that hosts several clusters of hot young stars, with the brightest young star in the nebula, called Source I, shining with the luminosity of 100,000 suns. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/pr200922.htmlNovember 16, 2009: The constellation of Orion is a hotbed of massive star formation, most prominently in the Great Nebula that sits in Orion's sword. The glowing gas of the Nebula is powered by a group of young massive stars, but behind it is a cluster of younger stars and clumps of gas. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/su200946.htmlNovember 13, 2009: The nucleus of an active galaxy, an AGN, contains a massive black hole that is vigorously accreting material. In the process it typically ejects jets of particles and radiates brightly at many wavelengths, in particular at X-ray wavelengths. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/su200945.htmlNovember 06, 2009: Astronomers have just published the discovery of the farthest known object in the cosmos: a star that exploded when the universe was only 630 million years old -- only 4.6% of its current age. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/pr200921.htmlNovember 02, 2009: Nearly 100 years ago, scientists detected the first signs of cosmic rays - subatomic particles (mostly protons) that zip through space at nearly the speed of light. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/su200944.htmlOctober 30, 2009: Stars, the most familiar objects in the night sky, make up only a tiny percentage of the total amount of matter in the universe -- about 2%. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/su200943.htmlOctober 23, 2009: The Orion Nebula is one of the most beautiful sights of the winter night sky, its gas and dust glowing from the intense ultraviolet radiation of a cluster of massive young stars. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/fe200913.htmlOctober 22, 2009: Over the next five years, Mark Reid and an international team of scientists will use the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) to map the spiral structure of the Milky Way. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/su200942.htmlOctober 16, 2009: Some dramatic galaxies eject gigantic, collimated jets of ionized gas millions of light-years long, powered by the massive black holes at their centers. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/su200941.htmlOctober 09, 2009: Most stars form in clusters. Recent studies of nearby star forming regions find that about three-quarters of their young stars are located in groups with ten or more members. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/fe200912.htmlOctober 08, 2009: In celebration of the International Year of Astronomy, Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum recently collaborated with Harvard College Observatory to open its first Public Observatory on the Mall. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/su200940.htmlOctober 02, 2009: Of the roughly 350 known exoplanets (i.e., extrasolar planets), the one orbiting the star HD149026 is unique. It has a mass comparable to that of Saturn but is much smaller in size, indicating that it is made up of a denser material such as ice or rocks. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/su200939.htmlSeptember 25, 2009: Gamma-rays are the most energetic known form of electromagnetic radiation, with each gamma ray being at least one hundred thousand times more energetic than an optical light photon. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/su200938.htmlSeptember 18, 2009: Supernovae, the explosive deaths of massive stars, disburse into space all of the chemical elements that were spawned inside the progenitor stars. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/fe200911.htmlSeptember 11, 2009: Accustomed to peering through the dust and debris of outer space, astronomers at the Smithsonian’s Whipple Observatory in southern Arizona were perplexed to find fresh deposits of dust and dirt upon the fragile mirrors of their telescopes. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/su200937.htmlSeptember 11, 2009: Our understanding of star formation leans heavily on observations of stars like the sun, namely, those that are modest in mass and that are born and evolve at a relatively leisurely pace. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/pr200920.htmlSeptember 09, 2009: The simple picture of star formation calls for giant clouds of gas and dust to collapse inward due to gravity, growing denser and hotter until igniting nuclear fusion. In reality, forces other than gravity also influence the birth of stars. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/su200936.htmlSeptember 04, 2009: Among the most astounding, unexpected, and important achievements of the past century (or even more) have been the discoveries of dark matter and dark energy, collectively dubbed the "dark sector." http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/su200935.htmlAugust 28, 2009: The Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) of our galaxy is a giant complex of molecular gas and dust situated in the innermost 700 light-years of the Milky Way. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/pr200919.htmlAugust 25, 2009: Finding a comet can be a quick way to get some immortal fame -- and a little spending money, as well. An annual award of several thousand dollars for discoveries of comets by amateur astronomers has just been announced for five individuals in five different countries. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/fe200910.htmlAugust 21, 2009: How do planets form? This most basic question of astrophysics continues to stump astronomers. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/su200934.htmlAugust 21, 2009: IC348 is a glowing nebula of young stars, hot gas, and cold dust seen in the direction of the constellation of Perseus. It is the nearest rich cluster of young stars to earth, being only about one thousand light-years away. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/su200933.htmlAugust 14, 2009: The existence of black holes is one of the most amazing and bizarre predictions of Einstein's theory of gravity. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/fe200909.htmlAugust 10, 2009: In southeastern Greenland, two rivers of ice named Helheim and Kangerdlugssuaq flow in spurts and starts toward the coast. They are much like any other glacier, except each carries a network of scientific instruments that monitor their movements to the millimeter. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/su200932.htmlAugust 07, 2009: A brown dwarf, a star whose mass is less than about 8% of the sun's, lacks sufficient gravitational contraction to heat up its interior to the roughly ten million kelvin temperatures needed for hydrogen burning (hydrogen burning fuels the sun). http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/pr200918.htmlAugust 05, 2009: NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has taken its first shots of the cosmos since warming up and starting its second career. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/su200931.htmlJuly 31, 2009: One of the brightest stars in our galaxy is the aging, cool giant star NML Cygnus. It has a relatively enormous mass -- about forty times that of the sun -- and a luminosity nearly a million times larger than the sun's; it is also only about 5000 light-years away. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/pz200908.htmlJuly 31, 2009: Dr. Giovanni G. Fazio, Senior Physicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, has been selected to receive the 2009 Secretary’s Distinguished Research Lecture Award of the Smithsonian Institution. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/pr200917.htmlJuly 29, 2009: A study published this week in the journal Nature offers an explanation for the origin of dwarf spheroidal galaxies. The research may settle an outstanding puzzle in understanding galaxy formation. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/su200930.htmlJuly 24, 2009: Stars spin. The sun, for example, takes about twenty-five days to rotate, as can be seen by watching its dark sunspots move across the disk.