The majority of extra-solar planets (about 278 of them) are more massive than Jupiter. About 20% of this majority group orbit their stars at a distances of less than one-tenth of an astro...

Cambridge, MA How do astronomers weigh a star that's trillions of miles away and way too big to fit on a bathroom scale? In most cases they can't, although they can get a best estimate u...

Of the nearly 500 extra-solar planets that have been confirmed to date, only about a dozen have actually been seen in images. Because planets are so much fainter than their host stars, s...

Cambridge, MA Astronomers using the South Pole Telescope report that they have discovered the most massive galaxy cluster yet seen at a distance of 7 billion light-years. The cluster (de...

Cambridge, MA - Dr. John Peter Huchra died unexpectedly on Friday, October 8 at the age of 61. He was the Robert O. & Holly Thomis Doyle Professor of Cosmology and the Senior Advis...

There are now over 490 confirmed extrasolar planets. The vast majority are gas giants like Jupiter, but they are much stranger because many orbit close to their stars and so are much h...

G327.1-1.1 is the aftermath of a massive star that exploded as a supernova in the Milky Way galaxy. A highly magnetic, rapidly spinning neutron star called a pulsar was left behind after ...

The galaxy Fornax A, at a distance of about 74 million light-years, is one of the nearest and brightest galaxies with giant radio lobes. These huge radio lobes -- they span a million lig...

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Cambridge, MA The Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) PS1 telescope has discovered an asteroid that will come within 4 million miles of Earth in mid-Octob...