Cambridge, MA Astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have discovered a planet somewhat larger and more massive than Neptune orbiting a star 120 light-years from E...

When a clump of interstellar gas and dust is small and dense enough, gravity plays a decisive role in turning that material into a new star. But what role does gravity play in shaping la...

Dr. Jeffrey McClintock will share the 2009 Rossi Prize for his research that measured the masses of black holes found in X-ray binary star systems. The prize is awarded annually by the Hi...

Our Milky Way galaxy is not alone in its cosmic neighborhood. It belongs to the “Local Group,” a set of about 30 galaxies that are held together by their mutual gravitational attraction. ...

Long Beach, CA Two new efforts have taken a famous supernova remnant from the static to the dynamic. A new movie of data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory shows changes in time nev...

Long Beach, CA The center of the Milky Way presents astronomers with a paradox: it holds young stars, but no one is sure how those stars got there. The galactic center is wracked with po...

Long Beach, CA Fasten your seat belts -- we're faster, heavier, and more likely to collide than we thought. Astronomers making high-precision measurements of the Milky Way say our Galaxy...

Long Beach, CA The planet Jupiter gained weight in a hurry during its infancy. It had to, since the material from which it formed probably disappeared in just a few million years, accord...

In 1929, Edwin Hubble discovered that galaxies are moving away from us by his observations of their Cepheid stars. Harvard astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt had found that a Cepheid star...

Cambridge, MA New computer visualization technology developed by the Harvard Initiative in Innovative Computing has helped astrophysicists understand that gravity plays a larger role tha...