Featured series 
Tag: Astronomy
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Science & Tech
Cosmic blast announces a future supernova
It’s one thing to theorize about an exploding star the size of our sun, it’s another to look up in the sky and watch one getting ready to blow. Astronomers are now doing this. On Feb. 12, a star known as RS Ophiuchi, some 8,000 trillion miles away, erupted in an explosion so bright it…
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Science & Tech
Jupiter’s ‘big brother’ has moon-forming dust disk
Earth’s moon was created by an early collision with another large planetary body. It was a “chip off the old block.” Mars captured its asteroidal moons as they passed by. But Jupiter made its own moons out of dust and gas remaining from its formation. Now, observations by astronomer Subhanjoy Mohanty of the Harvard- Smithsonian…
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Campus & Community
‘Wintering-over’ at the South Pole
They came to the South Pole, enduring months of bitter cold, darkness, and isolation, to peer at the galaxy’s center through clear, dry skies. And in December, they – scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) – declared “mission accomplished.” After 11 years, the Antarctic Submillimeter Telescope and Remote Observatory, AST/RO, was dismantled last…
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Science & Tech
Super-Earths may be three times more common than Jupiters
Astronomers have discovered a new “super-Earth” orbiting a red dwarf star located about 9,000 light-years away. This newfound world weighs about 13 times the mass of the Earth and is probably a mixture of rock and ice, with a diameter several times that of Earth. It orbits its star at about the distance of the…
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Science & Tech
Neutron star swaps lead to short gamma-ray bursts
Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions in the universe, emitting huge amounts of high-energy radiation. For decades their origin was a mystery. Scientists now believe they understand the processes that produce gamma-ray bursts. However, a new study by Jonathan Grindlay of the Harvard- Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and his colleagues, Simon Portegies Zwart…
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Science & Tech
Two exiled stars are leaving our galaxy forever
TV reality show contestants aren’t the only ones under threat of exile. Astronomers using the MMT Observatory in Arizona have discovered two stars exiled from the Milky Way galaxy. Those stars are racing out of the Galaxy at speeds of more than 1 million miles per hour – so fast that they will never return.…
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Science & Tech
Cosmic jet looks like giant tornado in space
While examining a region where new stars are forming with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers found a surprise – an object that looks like a giant tornado in space. The apparent tornado is shaped by a cosmic jet packing a powerful punch as it plows through clouds of interstellar gas and dust. They released an…
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Science & Tech
There’s more to the North Star than meets the eye
We tend to think of the North Star, Polaris, as a steady, solitary point of light that guided sailors in ages past. But there is more to the North Star than meets the eye – two faint stellar companions. The North Star is actually a triple star system. And while one companion can be seen…
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Science & Tech
A star that looks like a planet
Astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered a remarkably small brown dwarf surrounded by a dusty disk. The brown dwarf contains only about eight times the mass of Jupiter, making it one of the smallest known brown dwarfs. It is even smaller than several planets around other stars, leading to the question of whether…
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Science & Tech
Einstein’s rings in space
In a 1936 paper, Albert Einstein described how the gravitational field from a massive object can warp space and thereby deflect light. In special cases, the light from a distant object can be so distorted that it creates a complete ring known as an “Einstein ring.” The distortion maps the distribution of matter creating the…
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Science & Tech
A harvest of dozens of new stars
A new infrared image of the reflection nebula NGC 1333, located about 1,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Perseus, reveals dozens of stars like the Sun but much younger. “These newborns are less than a million years old – babies by astronomical standards,” said Rob Gutermuth of the Harvard- Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).…
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Science & Tech
Space telescope captures cosmic ‘Mountains of Creation’
Captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope’s infrared eyes, a new majestic image resembles the iconic “Pillars of Creation” picture taken of the Eagle Nebula in visible light by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in 1995. Both views feature star-forming clouds of cool gas and dust that have been sculpted into pillars by radiation and winds from…
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Science & Tech
Cosmic cloudshine
Hubble’s iconic images include many shots of cosmic clouds of gas and dust called nebulae. For example, the famous “Pillars of Creation” mark the birthplace of new stars within the Eagle Nebula. Yet despite their beauty, visible-light images show only the nebulae surfaces. Baby stars may hide beneath, invisible even to Hubble’s powerful gaze. Harvard…
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Campus & Community
Questions remain about China in space
Two Chinese astronauts spent five days in space in early October, boosting national pride and the reputation of China’s high-tech industry, but leaving experts scratching their heads about China’s military intentions. “Most analysts agree about what China is doing in space. There’s vast differences over why they’re doing it,” said Joan Johnson-Freese, chair of the…
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Campus & Community
CfA researchers discover black holes aren’t so black
Common wisdom holds that we can never see a black hole because nothing can escape it – not even light. Fortunately, black holes aren’t completely black. As gas is pulled into a black hole by its strong gravitational force, the gas heats up and radiates. That radiation can be used to illuminate the black hole…
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Science & Tech
It takes three Smithsonian observatories to decipher one mystery object
In an exercise that demonstrates the power of a multiwavelength investigation using diverse facilities, astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) have deciphered the true nature of a mysterious object hiding inside a dark cosmic cloud. They found that the cloud, once thought to be featureless, contains a baby star, or possibly a failed…
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Science & Tech
Black holes aren’t so black
As gas is pulled into a black hole by its strong gravitational force, the gas heats up and radiates. That radiation can be used to illuminate the black hole and paint its profile. Within a few years, astronomers believe they will be able to peer close to the horizon of the black hole at the…
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Science & Tech
Ferreting out the first stars
The first stars are so distant and formed so long ago that they are invisible to our best telescopes. Until they explode. Hypernovas (more powerful cousins of supernovas) and their associated gamma-ray bursts offer astronomers the possibility of detecting light from the first generations of stars. NASA’s Swift satellite already has seen a gamma-ray burst…
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Science & Tech
First baby photo of stellar twins
Newborn stars are difficult to photograph. They tend to hide in the nebulous stellar nurseries where they formed, enshrouded by thick layers of dust. Now, Smithsonian astronomer T.K. Sridharan (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and his colleagues have photographed a pair of stellar twins in infrared light, which penetrates the dust. And these babies are whoppers,…
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Science & Tech
Fastest pulsar speeding out of galaxy
A speeding, superdense neutron star somehow got a powerful “kick” that is propelling it completely out of our Milky Way Galaxy into the cold vastness of intergalactic space. Its discovery is puzzling astronomers who used the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) radio telescope to directly measure the fastest speed yet found in…
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Science & Tech
How to build a big star
The most massive stars in our galaxy weigh as much as 100 small stars like the Sun. How do such monsters form? Do they grow rapidly by swallowing smaller protostars within crowded star-forming regions? Some astronomers thought so, but a new discovery suggests instead that massive stars develop through the gravitational collapse of a dense…
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Campus & Community
Pros and amateurs team up for discovery
For the first time, amateur and professional astronomers have teamed up to discover a new planet circling a distant star. The planet was detected by looking for the effect of its gravitational field on light from a more distant star, a technique known as “microlensing.” It is only the second world to be discovered using…
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Campus & Community
Seeing the universe’s most powerful explosion
Reporting in the May 12 issue of Nature, astronomers announced that they have penetrated the heart of the universe’s most powerful explosion – a gamma-ray burst (GRB). Using the PAIRITEL (Peters Automated Infrared Imaging Telescope) robotic telescope on Mount Hopkins, Ariz., they detected a flash of infrared light accompanying the burst of high-energy radiation that…
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Science & Tech
Amateur and professional astronomers team to find new planet
Astronomer Scott Gaudi of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics believes that microlensing has the potential for wide use in the future: “With improving technologies and techniques, the first Earth-sized planet may be found by microlensing.” Last year marked the first discovery made using microlensing. This second find establishes the immediate usefulness of the technique in…
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Campus & Community
Zaldarriaga probes universe’s start
Matias Zaldarriaga is peering back into time to find his roots – and the roots of everything else ever created. Zaldarriaga, named professor of astronomy in July, is an expert in cosmology, which is the study of the origins and evolution of the universe. A theoretical astrophysicist, Zaldarriaga is trying to understand the faint cosmic…
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Science & Tech
Case of Sedna’s ‘missing moon’ solved
In trying to solve the riddle of Sedna’s “missing moon,” scientists Scott Gaudi, Krzysztof (Kris) Stanek and colleagues at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics took measurements that have cleared up the mystery by showing that a moon wasn’t needed after all. Sedna is rotating much more rapidly than originally believed, spinning once on its axis…
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Science & Tech
Astronomers measure slowest motion across the sky
“A snail crawling on Mars would appear to be moving across the surface more than 100 times faster than the motion we measured for this galaxy,” said Mark Reid of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a co-author on the paper. Reid and his colleagues used the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) to…
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Campus & Community
Cool brown dwarf may give birth to planets
Solar systems like our own may be forming around dim stars scattered all over the Milky Way. It’s possible that some of these systems could harbor planets with water and even life. The likelihood of such a possibility has increased with the discovery of a disk of gas and dust orbiting a star only about…
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Campus & Community
Biggest stars produce strongest magnets
Assistant Professor of Astronomy Bryan Gaensler and colleagues have discovered the source of powerful magnetic objects in the universe called magnetars, finding that some of the biggest stars in the cosmos become the strongest magnets when they die. First discovered in 1998, a magnetar is an exotic kind of neutron star – a city-sized ball…
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Science & Tech
Most Milky Way stars are single
Common wisdom among astronomers holds that most star systems in the Milky Way are multiple, consisting of two or more stars in orbit around each other. Common wisdom is wrong.