“Journey through an Exploded Star” 3D Interactive Experience
The Smithsonian today made available a new online interactive that allows users to explore a three-dimensional (3D) visualization of the remnants of a supernova, or…
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics News
Chandra Reveals Feedback from Supermassive Black Holes
X-ray observations have found copious amounts of very hot gas in galaxy clusters, and in the central regions more than was expected. While supernovae and…
VERITAS Collaboration Measures Smallest Star Size to Date
Scientists in the VERITAS (Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System) Collaboration have published a paper in Nature Astronomy journal detailing the results of their…
Planet Orbiting Barnard’s Star Might Have An Atmosphere
The closest exoplanet to us, if we include only single stars like the Sun, is the planet around Barnard’s Star, Barnard’s Star-b (“BSb”). (The planet…
Astronomers View Star Formation in the Central Molecular Zone
Stars form from the gas and dust in molecular clouds via a series of complex processes that are currently only partly understood, and the evolution…
What Was The Universe Like Before The Big Bang?
A team of scientists has proposed a powerful new test for inflation, the theory that the universe dramatically expanded in size in a fleeting fraction…
New Results Help Refine Current Models of AGN Activity
All massive galaxies are believed to host supermassive black holes (SMBH) at their centers that grow by accreting mass from their environment. The current picture…
Astronomers Detect Pre-Biotic Molecule Glycolonitrile in Space
Heterocyclic molecules are those containing atoms of at least two different elements (plus hydrogen) arranged in a ring structure. Nitrogen heterocycles are key components in…
Astronomers Discover Brown Dwarf Binary Star with Microlensing
Brown dwarfs are stars less massive than the sun and unable to burn hydrogen. They comprise (at least in mass) a bridge between planets and…
New Observations Show Clumps of Gas Swirling Around Black Hole
The supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, Sagittarius A*, is by far the closest such object to us, only…
TRAPPIST-1 Exposed to Heavy Bombardment of Charged Particles
TRAPPIST-1 is a system of seven Earth-sized worlds orbiting an ultra-cool dwarf star about 120 light-years away. The star, and hence its system of planets,…
Astronomers Discover A Dusty Primordial Star Forming Galaxy
Galaxies with extremely high rates of star formation (from hundreds to thousands of solar-masses worth of stars per year) are rare. Our Milky Way, for…
Breakthrough Allows Astronomers To See What Makes Sagittarius A* Glow
A black hole four million times as massive as our Sun lurks at the center of the Milky Way. This black hole, called Sagittarius A*…
MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey Confirms Puzzling Result
The universe is about 13.8 billion years old, and its stars are arguably its most momentous handiwork. Astronomers studying the intricacies of star formation across…
Astronomers Discover Double Star System That Flipped Planet-Forming Disk
New research that included astronomers Luca Matra and David J. Wilner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center For Astrophysics has found the first confirmed example of a…
Chandra Detects Circumnuclear Molecular Torus of AGN in NGC 5643
Most galaxies host supermassive black holes at their nuclei, each with millions or billions of solar-masses of material. There is thought to be a torus…
Astronomers Discover Intermediate Mass Black Holes in Galactic Nuclei
The existence of black holes is well established, and observations have found both stellar mass sized objects and giant ones millions to billions of times…
Astronomers Discover A New Neptune-Size Exoplanet, K2-263 b
The remarkable exoplanet discoveries made by the Kepler and K2 missions have enabled astronomers to begin to piece together the history of the Earth and…
