Cambridge, MA - The VERITAS array has confirmed the detection of gamma rays from the vicinity of a supermassive black hole. While these detections are relatively common for VERITAS, t...

Galaxy-galaxy interactions have long been known to influence galaxy evolution. They are commonplace events, and a large majority of galaxies show signs of interactions, including tidal t...

On this Independence Day a century and a half ago, Henrietta Swan Leavitt was born. While working at Harvard College Observatory in Cambridge, Mass. – now part of the Harvard-Smithsonian ...

Cambridge, MA - A new study provides new clues indicating that an exoplanet 500 light-years away is much like Earth.Kepler-186f is the first identified Earth-sized planet outside the S...

A binary star system is one that contains a pair of stars orbiting each other. A black hole X-ray binary is a binary system in which one of the stars is a black hole and the other is a n...

A hallmark of great research and educational institutions is their drive for introspection and self-improvement. In keeping with this, the Smithsonian Institution recently began a five-ye...

Astronomical masers (the radio wavelength analogs of lasers) were first identified in space over fifty years ago and have since been seen in many locations; astronomical lasers have since...

Cambridge, MA - After a nearly twenty-year long game of cosmic hide-and-seek, astronomers using ESA's XMM-Newton space observatory have finally found evidence of hot, diffuse gas perme...

Near Earth Objects (NEOs) are small solar system bodies whose orbits sometimes bring them close to the Earth, potentially threatening a collision. NEOs are tracers of the composition, dy...