Bok Globules
Bok globules are small interstellar clouds of very cold gas and dust that are so thick they are nearly totally opaque to visible light, although they can be studied with infrared and radi...
Eye on the Sky: An Astronomy Dialog
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Have you ever wondered how we find alien worlds? Whether E.T life exists? What happens if you fall into a black hole? CfA astronomers give their thoughts on these questions and more at th...
The Polaris Cluster
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A Cepheid star is one whose mass and age results in physical conditions that generate periodic oscillations in its photosphere. A Cepheid thus varies regularly in brightness, with a peri...
Nearby Black Hole is Feeble and Unpredictable
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Miami, FL
For over 10 years, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has repeatedly observed the Andromeda Galaxy for a combined total of nearly one million seconds. This unique data set has gi...
The Far Infrared Galaxy
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Our Milky Way galaxy, like other spiral galaxies, has copious amounts of dust in its spiral arms. The dust absorbs starlight, thereby blocking our optical views, but at the same time it ...
Seeing the Invisible
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Astronomers, like physicians, use as much of the electromagnetic spectrum as they can, from X-ray to radio wavelengths, to examine their subjects the with the most suitable diagnostics. F...
Roger Brissenden Named Deputy Director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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Dr. Roger Brissenden, Associate Director for High Energy Astrophysics at the CfA, and Program Manager for the Chandra X-ray Center at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, has been a...
The Edges of the Solar System
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The solar system does not end abruptly past the planets. Beyond the orbit of Neptune, the outermost planet (it orbits the sun at a distance of 30 AU, where one AU is the average distance...
Technology Developed for X-ray Astronomy is Being Adapted to Study Cancer Cells
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(Written by Christine Pulliam, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, for Science at the Smithsonian, a website featuring highlights of scientific research at the Smithsonian Institution....
The Supernovae of Triangulum
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The Triangulum Galaxy, at a distance of only 2.6 million light-years, is one of the closest spiral galaxies to earth. It is also the third largest member of our galactic neighborhood (af...