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. Using methanol and w...

Some dramatic galaxies eject gigantic, collimated jets of ionized gas millions of light-years long, powered by the massive black holes at their centers. The ionized jets are detected at r...

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. The format...

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 Observat...

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, indi...

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. The m...

Supernovae, the explosive deaths of massive stars, disburse into space all of the chemical elements that were spawned inside the progenitor stars. Furthermore, these violent explosions t...

(Written by Christine Pulliam, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, for Science at the Smithsonian, a website featuring highlights of scientific research at the Smithsonian Institution....

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....

Cambridge, MA 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 r...