FLWO Visitor & Science CenterThe new Visitor & Science Center—showcasing astrophysics exhibits, live science demonstrations, and views of the surrounding Santa Rita Mountains and MMT Observatory— is ...

The Milky Way is our galactic home, part of the story of how we came to be. Astronomers have learned that it’s a large spiral galaxy, similar to many others, but also different in ways that reflect ...

As a Smithsonian employee, you will receive either a Federal or a Smithsonian Trust Fund appointment. Individuals appointed to Federal positions are paid from the Smithsonian's annual Federal ...

Our modern understanding of gravity comes from Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which stands as one of the best-tested theories in science. General relativity predicted many phenomena ...

Our knowledge of the events and forces that shaped the early Universe is dependent on our ability to understand the most extreme conditions. On one hand, the Universe’s origin was incomprehensibly ...

Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian scientists study galaxy formation and evolution in a variety ways: Looking for hidden structures and unusual stars that reveal the Milky Way’s history.

All the atoms and light in the universe together make up less than five percent of the total contents of the cosmos. The rest is composed of dark matter and dark energy, which are invisible but ...

The universe began 13.8 billion years ago, and in its early years, it looked completely different than it does now. For nearly 400,000 years, the entire cosmos was opaque, which means we have no ...

When stars die, their fate is determined by how massive they were in life. Stars like our Sun leave behind white dwarfs: Earth-size remnants of the original star’s core. More massive stars explode as ...

Large galaxies like the Milky Way formed out of mergers with smaller galaxies and by stealing some of their stars. Astronomers discovered that as many as 25% of galaxies are currently merging with ...

For the first 380,000 years or so after the Big Bang, the entire universe was a hot soup of particles and photons, too dense for light to travel very far. However, as the cosmos expanded, it cooled ...

The Center for Astrophysics (CfA) provides world-class opportunities for academic training and career development in astrophysics. It is home to the Harvard University Department of Astronomy, which ...