The physical properties of the Milky Way, our home galaxy, and its evolutionary history are keys to understanding the history of galaxy formation across the cosmos, and details like the e...

Cambridge, MA - In everyday life, ultraviolet, or UV, light earns a bad reputation for being responsible for sunburns and other harmful effects on humans. However, research suggests th...

Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are extremely luminous, compact X-ray sources found in some nearby spiral galaxies. The nature of these mysterious sources is not well understood, but ...

The origin of binary stars has long been one of the central problems of astronomy. One of the main questions is how stellar mass affects the tendency to be multiple. There have been num...

Searches for the most distant galaxies have now probed earlier than the first billion years in the history of the universe, early enough to start seeing the primary effects of the first s...

Cambridge, MA - NASA has announced that the Arcus X-ray mission concept has been selected for a "Phase A" study as part of the $250 million Medium-Class Explorer (MIDEX) program.

Cambridge, MA - On August 21, 2017, millions of people across North America will experience a total solar eclipse for the first time. Scientists around the world, including several gro...

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) lost a true friend and generous supporter with the passing of Landon T. Clay on July 29, 2017.

Studies of molecular clouds have revealed that star formation usually occurs in a two step process. First, supersonic flows compress the clouds into dense filaments light-years long, aft...

To help commemorate the upcoming total solar eclipse on August 21st, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory has developed a free mobile app that gives users an interactive guide to thi...