A New Subclass of Extra-Solar Planets Discovered
Using the HATNet telescopes, CfA astronomers and colleagues discovered three new hot Jupiters and identified a new subclass of extra-solar planets, dubbed “highly inflated Jupiters.”…
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics News
The Behavior of Interstellar Dust Grains
In a newly published study, a team of scientists report the results of their theoretical models of the behavior of interstellar dust grains as the…
Astronomers Record Detailed Measurements of the Inner Region of a Quasar Nucleus
Using four submillimeter telescopes working simultaneously around the globe, a team of astronomers from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and colleagues made the first detailed measurements…
Centaurus a Hides a Gaseous Spiral at Its Core
Scientists at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan & Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics discovered that elliptical galaxy Centaurus A also shows signs of a spiral…
A Closer Look at Interacting Galaxies
Scientists look at how galaxy collisions can distort the shapes of the galaxies involved, including the shapes and orientations of the regions around their central…
Astronomers Measure a Black Hole’s “Point of No Return”
For the first time, international team of astronomers has measured a black hole’s “point of no return,” the closest distance that matter can approach before…
Probable Distance to Remnant of Kepler’s Supernova
Scientists at CfA have taken an important step in determining the distance of the remnant of Kepler’s supernova, concluding that the remnant distance is probably…
Pr0201b and Pr0211b Orbiting Sun-Like Stars in the Beehive Cluster
For the first time, a team of astronomers have spotted two new “Hot Jupiter” planets, called Pr0201b and Pr0211b, orbiting sun-like stars in the Beehive…
Cloud of Hydrogen and Helium Plunging Toward the Galactic Center
Scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics believe that the recently discovered cloud of hydrogen and helium plunging toward the galactic center represents the shredded…
Video and Sound Help Turn Astronomical Data Into Art
Alex Parker, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics’ Institute for Theory and Computation, incorporated sound and audio to astronomical images to create…
Glycolaldehyde Discovered in the Material around a Newly Developing Star
A newly published study details the discovery of glycolaldehyde, a simple sugar, in the material around a newly developing star that is roughly the size…
Scientists Use Light From an Exploding Star to Study Distant Galaxy
A recently published study details how scientists used light from an exploding star as a probe to study the gas conditions in the space between…
Pair of Eclipsing White Dwarfs Produce Gravitational Waves
Discovered last year in system J0651, two white dwarf stars are so close together that they make a complete orbit in less than 13 minutes…
Rapid Star Formation Observed in the Phoenix Cluster
Using the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the Magellan telescopes in Chile, the South Pole Telescope in Antarctica, and other facilities, a team of astronomers discovered the…
Arepo Software Helps Simulate the Birth and Evolution of Galaxies
By using Harvard’s Odyssey high-performance supercomputer and new software called Arepo, a team of scientists developed a new computational approach that can accurately follow the…
Probing the Cosmic Infrared Background
Using the Infrared Array Camera on the Spitzer Space Telescope, a team of astronomers probed the cosmic infrared background, finding structural features produced by the…
Examining the Dust Absorption of Active Galactic Nuclei
Using the infrared spectrometer on the Spitzer Space Telescope to examine the dust absorption of active galactic nuclei, astronomers at Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory found that…
Examining the Accuracy of the Spectral Energy Distribution Models
In a new study, a team of astronomers set out to evaluate the accuracy of the spectral energy distribution (SED) models, finding that the models…