TOPICSHarvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

HD1

Astronomers spotted the most distant astronomical object ever

Shining only ~300 million years after the Big Bang, it may be home to the oldest stars in the universe.

downward-moving dark voids

Mysterious finger-like features in solar flares explained

A new explanation for the mysterious downward-moving dark voids seen in some solar flares.

a new type of binary star

Astronomers observed a new type of binary star long theorized to exist

The discovery finally confirms how a rare type of star in the universe forms and evolves.

Mysterious cavity

Mysterious 500-light-year-wide ‘cavity’ discovered in space

The sphere-shaped phenomenon may explain how supernovae lead to star formation.

WASP-62b

First cloudless, Jupiter-like planet discovered

It completes a rotation around its star in just four-and-a-half days.

This image shows the disc around the young star AB Aurigae in polarized near-infrared light as seen with the European Very Large Telescope’s SPHERE instrument. Measurements of the molecular components of the disk at millimeter wavelengths reveal several unexpected properties including a warmer temperature, more dust, and a deficiency of sulfur

A Rosetta stone for planet formation

A disk with gaps suggestive of clearing by newly forming planets.

A schematic showing the motions of stars around the supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy. The stars lie in an edge-on plane, and astronomers have used this constraint to deduce that the spin of the black hole must be less than about 0.1

Astronomers determined the spin of the supermassive black hole in the Milky Way

The Spin of the Supermassive Black Hole in our Galaxy.

Dark matter and massive galaxies

Dark matter and massive galaxies

Dark matter is a hypothetical invisible mass thought to be responsible for adding gravity to galaxies and other bodies. However, the nature of dark...

The milky way could be spreading life from star to star

The milky way could be spreading life from star to star

In 1871, Lord Kelvin suggested that life could propagate by traveling on meteorites. More than a century later, it was hypothesized that some achondrites were...

The distribution of satellite galaxies orbiting a computer-simulated galaxy, as predicted by the Lambda-cold-dark-matter cosmological model. The blue circles surround the brighter satellites, the white circles the ultrafaint satellites (so faint that they are not readily visible in the image). The ultrafaint satellites are amongst the most ancient galaxies in the Universe; they began to form when the Universe was only about 100 million years old (compared to its current age of 13.8 billion years). The image has been generated from simulations from the Auriga project carried out by researchers at the Institute for Computational Cosmology, Durham University, UK, the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies, Germany, and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Germany.' Credit: Institute for Computational Cosmology, Durham University, UK/ Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies, Germany / Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Germany.

Hugely exciting: Oldest galaxies in the universe found

The group from the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has discovered proof that the faintest satellite...

Recent Stories