Cambridge, MA In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the start of the Space Age, an asteroid has been named "Astronautica." Minor planet number 100,000 (also known as 1982 SH1) was ch...

Once a star like the sun has consumed most of its hydrogen fuel, its outer layers swell up and cool off; the star becomes a "red giant." Our sun will evolve into a red giant star in an...

The Vela Molecular complex is a set of giant clouds of gas and dust that are not particularly well known to North Americans because they are in the direction of the southern hemisphere co...

Ten years ago this winter, two teams of astronomers, one led by CfA scientists, astonished the world with their results showing that the universe would expand forever. Soon afterwards th...

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The solar corona is the extended, gaseous, outer atmosphere of the sun. The corona is very hot, over a million kelvin, and motions of this hot gas produce twisted magnetic fields that ext...

An ultra-luminous X-ray source (ULX) is an object (excluding a galactic nucleus) that is more luminous in its X-ray emission alone than one million suns are at all wavelengths. Most gala...

A billion years or so after the creation of the universe, and about eight billion years before our own sun formed, the universe underwent a period of dramatic star formation. Recently st...

Astronomers suspect that most galaxies have been involved in collisional encounters during their lifetimes. Galaxy-galaxy interactions stimulate the vigorous formation of stars, as gravit...

The Orion Nebula, shining brightly in the "sword" of the constellation Orion, is one of the most famous sights in the sky. The nebula is actually several clusters of hot young stars surr...