Astronomers are on the threshold of discovering the Holy Grail of planetary sciences - new Earth-like planets. The next challenge will be to determine whether or not these worlds have lif...

Supermasssive black holes - giants with masses of millions or billions of suns - are relatively famous because they reside at the nuclei of galaxies like quasars where they are responsibl...

On April 16, 2009, Lester M. Cohen was awarded the NASA Distinguished Public Service medal "...For your crucial and hugely significant role in the development of the lightweight telescope...

Among the approximately 340 extra-solar planets known to date are 58 that were discovered because they transit their stars (that is, their orbits take them in front of their stars as seen...

Supernovae are the explosive deaths of massive stars. These cataclysms disburse into space all of the chemical elements that were spawned inside the progenitor stars, while adding to them...

Cambridge, MA The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) will have three of its facilities featured in a live 24-hour video webcast called "Around the World in 80 Telescopes."...

Dust is scattered throughout space, and is composed of fine particles of silicates like sand on earth, or of carbon (often blended with other elements). The dust strongly absorbs light at...

Cambridge, MA Does a twin Earth exist somewhere in our galaxy? Astronomers are getting closer and closer to finding an Earth-sized planet in an Earth-like orbit. NASA's Kepler spacecraft...

BL Lacertae objects (BL Lacs) are a particularly enigmatic group of galaxies. In one regard they are like many other galaxies: they have nuclei with very energetic processes ongoing that...

Cambridge, MA A new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope offers a rare view of an imminent collision between the cores of two merging galaxies, each powered by a black hole with mil...