The corona of a star is the hot, gaseous outer region of its atmosphere. The sun's corona is over a million kelvin, and in some stars can be even ten times hotter. In sun-like stars the c...

Cambridge, MA A team of scientists and engineers has been selected by NASA to study design concepts for a radio telescope destined for the far side of the Moon. The telescope, at present...

Cambridge, MA Four proposals for next-generation astronomy missions, which were developed by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), have received NASA fund...

In its infancy, before its planets formed, our sun was ringed by a disk of gas and dust. Astronomers estimate that the dust in this preplanetary disk coagulated and began forming structu...

The process of star formation, once thought to involve just the simple coalescence of material under the influence of gravity, is now known to incorporate an exceedingly complex series of...

About seven and one-half billion years from now, our sun will have converted nearly all of its hydrogen fuel into helium through fusion, and then burned most of that helium into carbon an...

Cambridge, MA Astronomers have discovered that rocky, terrestrial planets might orbit many, if not most, of the nearby sun-like stars in the disk of our galaxy. These new results suggest...

On average, one new star a year is born in a nursery somewhere in our Milky Way galaxy, at least according to the best current approximations. Stellar nurseries are located in giant clou...

Cambridge, MA Newborn stars peek out from beneath their natal blanket of dust in this dynamic image of the Rho Ophiuchi star-forming region from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Called "R...

In 1969, astronomers discovered that ammonia (NH3) was present in large quantities in interstellar gas clouds. The species was most apparent in regions of star formation where the densit...