An "exoplanet" is an extra-solar planet, that is, a planet orbiting a star other than our own sun. Of the roughly 307 currently known extrasolar planets, about thirty of them transit the...

Stars form as gravitational forces coalesce the gas and dust in interstellar clouds until the material forms clumps dense enough to become stars. But how this happens, and whether or not ...

Cambridge, MA Water is being blasted to pieces by a young star's laser-like jets, according to new observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.The discovery provides a better unders...

About ten years ago, astronomers using new submillimeter wavelength facilities discovered the existence of a new class of very distant galaxies. These objects are located so far away that...

Black holes are by far the "simplest" objects in the universe because they can be completely characterized by just three numbers: their mass, electric charge, and spin. Although they are...

In 1967, an X-ray sounding rocket discovered a fantastically bright source of X-ray emission coming from the direction of the constellation of Cygnus. Named Cyg X-3, it was soon identifi...

Cambridge, MA Astronomers have taken the closest look ever at the giant black hole in the center of the Milky Way. By combining telescopes in Hawaii, Arizona, and California, they detect...

Perhaps the most astonishing and revolutionary discovery in cosmology was Edwin Hubble's observation that galaxies are moving away from us. It provides the underpinning of the big bang p...

Cambridge, MA A new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope tells a tale of life and death, and reveals a rich family history. The striking infrared picture shows a colorful cosmic clo...

New stars are continually forming in clouds of gas and dust in our galaxy. Astronomers at the CfA and elsewhere who watch these births have a very good (though not perfect) understanding...