The most luminous galaxies in the universe can be over a thousand times brighter than our Milky Way. They are not particularly bright in the optical, however, because most of their radiat...

Planets are formed from the disk of gas and dust around a star, but the mechanisms for doing so are imperfectly understood.  Gas is the key driver in the dynamical evolution of plane...

Artificial intelligence is classifying real supernova explosions without the traditional use of spectra, thanks to a team of astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smi...

A meteor is a rocky or metallic body that enters the Earth’s atmosphere (or the atmosphere of another planet) from space at high speed and burns up; meteors that mostly survive the trip a...

Seyfert galaxies are distinguished by their bright nuclei and radiation from highly ionized atoms. Seyferts look much like quasars, but unlike point-like quasars the Seyfert host galaxies...

Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the Sun, and its planet, Proxima Cen b ("Proxima b"), lies in its habitable zone (the distance range within which surface water can be liquid), mak...

Nancy Brickhouse of The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as a AAAS F...

Cambridge, MA - An international team of scientists led by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, has identified a problem with the growing interest in extractable reso...

The carbon atom can be easily ionized, more easily than hydrogen atoms for example. In star forming regions, where massive young stars emit ultraviolet light capable of ionizing atoms, al...

Cambridge, MA - Sparked by an image uploaded to Twitter, new research indicates that the light produced by black hole accretion may be bright enough to reflect off of dust, illuminating ...