Comet Tempel 1, discovered in 1867 by the German astronomer Wilhelm Tempel, orbits the sun every 5.5 years. In the summer of 2005, when it returned from its travels in the outer solar sys...

A supernova marks the explosive death of a massive star. The cataclysm disburses into space all of the chemical elements that were spawned inside the progenitor star, making supernovae th...

Cambridge, MA In an unprecedented flurry of honors, three astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) have been recognized for their innovative work by three lea...

Cambridge, MA Astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) have found that a supernova discovered last year was caused by two colliding white dwarf stars. The whi...

Black holes are irresistible sinks for matter and energy, so dense that not even light can escape from their gravitational clutches. Massive black holes contain millions to billions of s...

Cambridge, MA Using two NASA satellites, astronomers have discovered a black hole that obliterates a record announced just two weeks ago. The new black hole, with a mass 24 to 33 times t...

Cambridge, MA Comet 17P/Holmes may be old, but it can still kick up its heels and go dancing with the stars! It was discovered more than 100 years ago, and since then has made 16 loops a...

Cambridge, MA A once-faint comet has made a sudden leap from obscurity to center stage. Comet 17P/Holmes, now visible to northern hemisphere residents, increased its brightness by a fact...

The first stars in the universe are thought to have begun forming about one billion years after the big bang, as the neutral hydrogen atoms in the expanding universe gathered together int...

Beyond the orbit of Neptune lies a vast expanse of space sprinkled with smaller, icy bodies; this region is known as the Kuiper Belt. Named after the Dutch-born American astronomer Gerard...