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 ...

The High Energy Astrophysics Division's main focus is on X-ray astronomy via observations of high-energy sources with instruments aboard satellites, rockets, balloons, and the Space Shuttle. The ...

Abell 370, a galaxy cluster located nearly 4 billion light-years away from Earth features several arcs of light, including the "Dragon Arc" (lower left of center). These arcs are caused by ...

TheThe Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO) is the largest satellite facility of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), part of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.

The need for extremely precise instrumentation in astronomy can often be transferred into the medical field. Beyond pure research, which benefits humanity through various technological applications, ...

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 ...

What We Know About Galaxies Edwin Hubble, namesake of the Hubble Space Telescope, developed a classification of galaxy shapes, or morphologies, in 1926 that is still widely used today. He categorized ...

Black holes are found in the centers of most galaxies, where they can influence star formation and the distribution of atoms in the environment surrounding them. However, direct observation of a black ...

Mercury pops up toward the end of the month. Look for it quite low in the west, just as the glow of sunset is fading. It's highest and most visible on the 27th. Mars is still visible in the couple of ...

Astronomers have discovered thousands of planets orbiting other stars. Extrapolating from that knowledge, the Milky Way alone is probably home to hundreds of billions of planets, many of which are ...

Cambridge, MA--The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration has released new images of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87*) using data from observations taken ...

Cambridge, Mass. – A new study has revealed the true shape of the diffuse cloud of stars surrounding the disk of our galaxy. For decades, astronomers thought this cloud of stars — called the stellar ...