Tag: Astronomy

  • Nation & World

    Finding explanation for Milky Way’s warp

    The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard and Smithsonian’s results bolster hypothesis of how galaxy evolved.

    3 minutes
    The Milky Way’s galactic disk is warped and flared, similar to Galaxy ESO pictured here. Credit: NASA/Space Telescope Science Institute
  • Nation & World

    Mystery of dark matter — and search for WIMP

    MIT’s Peter Fisher details his new book, “What Is Dark Matter?,” at Harvard science event.

    5 minutes
    Andromeda galaxy
  • Nation & World

    New director plots fresh course for the CfA

    As the first woman director of the Center for Astrophysics, Lisa Kewley talks about strategies for a new era in astronomy, growing up with a love for space, and challenges for women in the field.

    7 minutes
    Lisa Kewley
  • Nation & World

    Who wants ice cream? At this point, pretty much everyone

    Despite downpour, the Department of Astronomy ice cream social event draws a crowd.

    1 minute
    People eating ice cream.
  • Nation & World

    Reaching for the stars

    Using robotic telescopes and other engaging astronomy activities, researchers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian hope to spark interest in the sciences.

    3 minutes
    Student using computer.
  • Nation & World

    Black hole on the move

    Astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian have detected a moving supermassive black hole.

    3 minutes
    A supermassive black hole.
  • Nation & World

    3 takes on dealing with uncertainty

    In these volatile times, three Harvard professors share insights from their fields on how to handle uncertainty.

    5 minutes
    Forked path.
  • Nation & World

    In a photo of a black hole, a possible key to mysteries

    So little is known about black holes and the image hints at a path to a higher-resolution image and more and better data.

    6 minutes
    Rings around a black hole.
  • Nation & World

    The giant in our stars

    Astronomers at Harvard have discovered a monolithic, wave-shaped gaseous structure — the largest ever seen in our galaxy — and dubbed it the “Radcliffe Wave.”

    7 minutes
    Illustration of stars in space.
  • Nation & World

    28 top stories of 2019

    A review of the top 28 Harvard Gazette stories of 2019.

    3 minutes
    2019 graduates.
  • Nation & World

    A ‘Goldilocks zone’ for planet size

    Researchers have redefined the lower size limit for planets to maintain surface liquid water for long periods of time, extending the so-called habitable zone for small, low-gravity planets.

    5 minutes
    moon Ganymede orbits the giant planet Jupi
  • Nation & World

    Astronomy Lab sees the light — and wants everyone else to, too

    Accessibility devices at the lab use sound to allow the visually impaired to envision the stars

    3 minutes
    Astronomy lab manager showing braille in the astronomy lab
  • Nation & World

    A way to make Mars habitable

    Researchers from Harvard University, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, and the University of Edinburgh suggest that regions of the Martian surface could be made habitable with a material — silica aerogel — that would mimic Earth’s atmospheric greenhouse effect.

    5 minutes
    Robin Wordsworth
  • Nation & World

    Rocketwoman

    Fifty years ago this summer, Neil Armstrong took his “giant leap for mankind” on the moon. In his wake hundreds of others have flown into space, including Ellen Ochoa, a four-time shuttle astronaut who stepped down as director of the Johnson Space Center in 2018 and is currently a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy…

    15 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Before the Big Bang

    Harvard researchers are proposing using a “primordial standard clock” as a probe of the primordial universe. The team laid out a method that may be used to falsify the inflationary theory experimentally.

    5 minutes
    A representation of the timeline of the universe.
  • Nation & World

    ‘Seeing the unseeable’

    A years-long effort by dozens of researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics reveals the first-ever image of a supermassive black hole.

    9 minutes
    In the first picture of a black hole, it is outlined by emission from hot gas swirling around it under the influence of strong gravity near its event horizon.
  • Nation & World

    A black hole, revealed

    Researchers at the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) just unveiled the first-ever image of a black hole, which captures what EHT Director Sheperd Doeleman called “a one-way door from our universe.”

    5 minutes
    Harvard Senior Research Fellow Shep Doeleman
  • Nation & World

    150 years later, her star is still rising

    At Harvard College Observatory in the late 19th and early 20th century, Henrietta Swan Leavitt developed a powerful new tool for estimating the distances of stars and galaxies.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    First glimpse of a kilonova, and Harvard was there

    Marking the beginning of a new era in astrophysics, scientists for the first time have detected gravitational waves and electromagnetic radiation, or light, from the same event. Harvard researchers were pivotal in the work.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Last survivors on Earth

    A testament to the resiliency of life, the microscopic tardigrade can survive any cosmic calamity, according to an Oxford-Harvard study.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Just-so black holes

    New findings advance insight on formation of supermassive black holes in the early epochs of the universe.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Guardians of the sky

    After a flood threatened to destroy the Harvard College Observatory’s trove of glass plate negatives, staff members and students from around the University showed up to help move the plates to safety.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Charged air

    For doctoral student Sarah Rugheimer, the study of atmosphere holds deep promise in the search for extrasolar life.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Far-out questions

    Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb talked about the search for intelligent life in a lecture at the Science Center.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The search for other Earths

    Scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics are drafting the target list for NASA’s next planet-finding telescope, the orbiting Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, which will search the Earth’s galactic neighborhood for planets that might support life.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Putting the stars within reach

    Two communications specialists at the Chandra X-Ray Observatory have authored a guide to the universe, aiming to show people around a universe they say belongs to us all.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Dying stars source of life?

    Researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have found that even dying stars could host planets with life — and if such life exists, they believe we might be able to detect it within the next decade.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Stars in the making

    A paper authored by Harvard’s Eli Visbal with colleagues from the California Institute of Technology and Tel Aviv University suggests that it may be far easier than commonly thought to peer deep into the universe’s history and observe the telltale signs of the formation of the first stars and galaxies.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The last dance between Venus and the sun

    Before 2004, the most recent Venus transit occurred more than a century ago, in 1882, and was used to compute the distance from the Earth to the sun. On June 5, 2012, another Venus transit will occur. Scientists with NASA’s Kepler mission hope to discover Earth-like planets outside our solar system by searching for transits…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Earth’s sister in the crosshairs

    A new book by Harvard astronomer Dimitar Sasselov explains the revolution in understanding the universe that views life as a natural part of planetary evolution and that has researchers on the brink of finding worlds that echo this one.

    4 minutes