Massive galaxies in the local universe, in order to be large today, probably began forming their stars in the early universe. Astronomers do indeed see significantly enhanced star-formati...

Join Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and our friends for a Nationwide Livestream Star Party, on May 22, 2020! This event starts at 7 pm Pacific Time (8 pm Mountain, 9 pm Central, 10...

Of the roughly 4300 exoplanets confirmed to date, about ten percent of them are classified as "hot Jupiters." These are planets with masses between about 0.4 and 12 Jupiter-masses and orb...

Our Milky Way is a member of a cluster of galaxies, the co-called "Local Group," about fifty galaxies whose other large member is Andromeda about 2.3 million light-years away. Most galaxi...

Understanding Not Just Facts Science is much greater than a set of facts that can be memorized. The concepts linking those facts together are far more important, but concepts are also mo...

A Community for Young Scientists Science doesn’t take place in isolation: scientists pursue their research questions in teams and by interacting with other practitioners. 

Lars Hernquist of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian has been awarded the 2020 Gruber Cosmology Prize along with Volker Springel of the Max Planck Institute for Astro...

Small objects in the solar system, including both comets and asteroids, have a wide range of dynamical parameters and physical properties. Comets, for example, originate in the outer reac...

The sparsely distributed hot gas found today between galaxies, the intergalactic medium (IGM), is ionized. The early universe started off hot, but then it rapidly expanded and cooled allo...

Harvard Astronomy department chair Abraham Loeb has been nominated to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). The council advises the president of the Unite...