Cambridge, MA New research suggests that billions of stars in our galaxy have captured rogue planets that once roamed interstellar space. The nomad worlds, which were kicked out of the s...

A spectacular eruption at the edge of the solar disk was captured by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument aboard NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) on April 16, 2012. ...

Cambridge, MA For the last 1000 days the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC), aboard NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, has been operating continuously to probe the universe from its most distant ...

The Earth is not at rest. It orbits the Sun, which in turn orbits the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, which in turn moves within the Local Group of Galaxies - a collection of about fifty...

How do you see the invisible? That’s the puzzle faced by astronomers wanting to study black holes. A black hole gets its name for good reason – its strong gravity is so extreme that nothi...

Polarized light is a familiar phenomenon, as people who prefer polarized sunglasses can testify. The electric field in a beam of light can vibrate either left-right or up-down, and the sc...

Cambridge, MA Most galaxies, including the Milky Way, have a supermassive black hole at their center weighing millions to billions of suns. But how do those black holes grow so hefty? So...

Cambridge, MA Analysis of data from the 10-meter South Pole Telescope (SPT) is providing new support for the most widely accepted explanation of dark energy - the mysterious force that i...

Cambridge, MA Astronomers announced today that they have made the most accurate measurement yet of galaxy distances in the faraway universe, giving an unprecedented look at the time when...

The term "laboratory astrophysics" might sound like an oxymoron; after all, how can equipment in a small room possibly simulate cosmic effects seen in the vastness of space. But in fact, ...