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Tag: Harvard College Observatory (HCO)
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Science & Tech
Visitors will gravitate to ‘Black Holes’ exhibit
On Sunday, June 21, a new exhibit developed by educators and scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) will open at the Boston Museum of Science. Called “Black Holes: Space Warps & Time Twists,” the traveling exhibition pulls visitors into the modern search for real black holes – the most mysterious and powerful objects…
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Science & Tech
Charbonneau gets prestigious ‘young researcher’ award
David Charbonneau, the 34-year-old Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor of Astronomy, has been named the recipient of the National Science Foundation’s 2009 Alan T. Waterman Award, and will receive $500,000 over a three-year period for scientific research or advanced study in his field. The annual Waterman Award recognizes an outstanding young researcher in any field…
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Science & Tech
Strange new planet baffles astronomers
Using a network of small automated telescopes known as HAT, Smithsonian astronomers have discovered a planet unlike any other known world. This new planet, designated HAT-P-1, orbits one member of a pair of distant stars 450 light-years away in the constellation Lacerta. “We could be looking at an entirely new class of planets,” said Gaspar…
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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
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
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
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
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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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
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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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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Science & Tech
High school AP courses do not predict college success in science
A survey of 18,000 college students enrolled in introductory biology, chemistry, and physics has found little evidence that high school Advanced Placement (AP) courses significantly boost college performance in the sciences. The study by researchers at Harvard University and the University of Virginia (UVA) found the best predictors of success in college science courses to…
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Science & Tech
New maser measurements trace detail in active galactic core
The roiling cores of many active galaxies are difficult to see in detail because of surrounding gas and interstellar dust. Smithsonian astronomers announced Jan. 12, 2006, however, a first-time measurement that may help to better trace the structure of these unusual regions. Elizabeth M. L. Humphreys and other Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) research team…
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Science & Tech
Astronomers spot the Great Orion Nebula’s successor
Astronomers announced Jan. 11, 2006, that they have found the next Orion Nebula. Known as W3, this glowing gas cloud in the constellation Cassiopeia has just begun to shine with newborn stars. Shrouds of dust currently hide its light, but this is only a temporary state. In 100,000 years – a blink of the eye…
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Science & Tech
Going beyond Einstein
Observations by two astronomers confirm one important theory about how a black hole’s extreme gravity can stretch light. The data also paint an intriguing image of how a spinning black hole can drag the very fabric of space around with it, creating a choppy spacetime sea that distorts everything falling into the black hole. Jon…
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Science & Tech
Spitzer puts a new spin on the Helix Nebula
Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) is a challenging stargazing target for amateur astronomers. It is one of the closest planetary nebulas – a type of nebula formed from gas ejected by a dying sunlike star. Yet it is so large and spread out in the sky that it appears very dim in a telescope eyepiece. Long-exposure…
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Science & Tech
Frequent starbursts sterilize center of Milky Way
A scenario in which exploding stars kill all life within the center of our galaxy is detailed by stronomer Antony Stark (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and colleagues in the October 10, 2004, issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The team’s discovery was made possible using the unique capabilities of the Antarctic Submillimeter Telescope and Remote…
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Science & Tech
Galactic collision reveals fate of Milky Way galaxy
Sixty-eight million light-years away, the Antennae galaxies are locked in a dance of death, with stars being ripped from their orbits and spiral arms being shredded into streamers that dangle in space. Several billion years from now, our home — the Milky Way galaxy — might look the same as the Andromeda galaxy smashes into…
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Science & Tech
Tiny “David” telescope finds “Goliath” planet
A newfound planet detected by a small, 4-inch-diameter telescope demonstrates that we are at the cusp of a new age of planet discovery. Soon, new worlds may be located at an accelerating pace, bringing the detection of the first Earth-sized world one step closer. “This discovery demonstrates that even humble telescopes can make huge contributions…
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Science & Tech
Some globular clusters may be leftovers from snacking galaxies
According to the hierarchical theory of galaxy formation, galaxies have grown larger over time by consuming smaller dwarf galaxies and star clusters. And sometimes, it seems that the unfortunate prey is not swallowed whole but instead is munched like a peach, stripped of its outer layers to leave behind only the pit. New findings by…
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Science & Tech
Lifeless suns dominated early universe
The very first generation of stars were not at all like our Sun. They were white-hot, massive stars that were very short-lived. Burning for only a few million years, they collapsed and exploded as brilliant supernovae. Those very first stars began the seeding process in the universe, spreading vital elements like carbon and oxygen, which…
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Science & Tech
First supernovae quickly seeded universe with stuff of life
The early universe was a barren wasteland of hydrogen, helium, and a touch of lithium, containing none of the elements necessary for life as we know it. From those primordial gases were born giant stars 200 times as massive as the Sun, burning their fuel at such a prodigious rate that they lived for only…
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Science & Tech
A pancake, not a doughnut, shapes distant galactic center
Astronomer Lincoln Greenhill (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and colleagues have found direct evidence for a “pancake” of gas and dust at the center of Circinus — a thin, warped disk surrounding the galaxy’s central, supermassive black hole. That disk shapes the galaxy’s nucleus. It shadows different regions from the “glare” of the black hole, a…