Washington, DC Most searches for planets around other stars, also known as exoplanets, focus on Sun-like stars. Those searches have proven successful, turning up more than 400 alien worl...

NASA has extended a contract with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., to provide science and operational support for the Chandra X-ray Observatory, a powerful t...

The constellation of Vela (visible only from the southern hemisphere) contains a set of giant clouds of gas and dust known collectively as the Vela Molecular complex. The Vela clouds con...

Although over 400 extra-solar planets are now known orbiting stars other than our sun, nearly all of these planets are bigger than the Earth in both mass and size. In fact, most of them a...

CfA scientist John Raymond is a newly elected fellow of the American Physical Society for his outstanding contributions to the understanding of a broad range of astrophysical processes in...

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The star Chi Cygni is located about 550 light-years away, in the direction of the constellation of Cygnus the Swan. It is a notable star because, unlike the sun which still burns hydrogen...

Cambridge, MA Astronomers announced today that they have discovered a "super-Earth" orbiting a red dwarf star 40 light-years from Earth. They found the distant planet with a small fleet ...

Cambridge, MA About 550 light-years from Earth, a star like our Sun is writhing in its death throes. Chi Cygni has swollen in size to become a red giant star so large that it would swall...

The corona is the hot outer region of the sun's atmosphere. The corona is threaded by magnetic fields that loop and twist upwards from the sun's surface, driven by motions of its dense at...