Chandra's Sweet 16
The number 16 can be pretty special. For many people, their 16th birthday is cause for celebration: perhaps an opportunity to drive a car, a time to think about the next steps of educatio...
The Fastest Unbound Stars in the Universe
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Stars do not stand still. They move through the heavens with motions determined by their encounters with other stars and stellar systems. Stellar velocities in the Milky Way are typically...
Cambridge Scientists Helped New Horizons With Directions To Pluto
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When I asked Scott Kenyon about his reaction to the news that New Horizons had actually flown by Pluto, his answer wasn't that different from those of the myriad of people I've chatted wi...
An Over-Massive Black Hole in the Young Universe
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Astronomers generally accept the notion that black holes at the centers of galaxies co-evolve with their host galaxies, and that they have done did so during all cosmic epochs, from the e...
Transition Disks
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A star is typically born with a disk of gas and dust encircling it, from which planets develop as dust grains in the disk collide, stick together and grow. These disks, warmed by the sta...
The Discovery of the Molecule Si-C-Si in Space
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The space between stars is not empty -- it contains a vast reservoir of diffuse material with about 5-10% of the total mass of our Milky Way galaxy. Most of the material is gas, but abou...
Star Formation Near Supermassive Black Holes
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Most if not all galaxies are thought to host a supermassive black hole in their nuclei, a finding that is both one the most important and amazing in modern astronomy. A supermassive black...
The Physical Properties of Dense Molecular Clouds
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Small, dense interstellar clouds of gas and dust, containing hundreds to thousands of solar-masses of material, are suspected of being the precursors to stars and stellar clusters. These...
MINERVA: Hunting for Earth's Twin
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Astronomers are celebrating the dedication of a new planet-hunting telescope known as Minerva. Installed at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in Arizona, the Minerva project is an arr...
The Ages of Extragalactic Jets
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The longest known highly collimated structures in the universe are the narrow jets that emanate from the vicinity of powerful black holes in certain types of galactic nuclei. These narr...