Understanding the cosmos involves both observation and theory. Observation provides real-world data about how stars, galaxies, and other objects in space behave. Theory connects that data together ...

About 13.8 billion years ago, the Big Bang gave rise to everything, everywhere, and everywhen—the entire known Universe. What caused the Big Bang? What happened that first moment at the beginning of ...

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian High Energy Astrophysics division focuses on X-ray astronomy and instrumentation involved in observations of high-energy sources. This research aims ...

Scientists now estimate that there are over a trillion galaxies in the Universe. Many follow broad classification patterns, but no two are exactly alike. The variety of galaxies we see gives us a ...

Cambridge, MA — A team of astronomers led by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian has discovered a rare object far beyond Neptune, from a class known as trans-Neptunian objects, that is ...

An international team of astronomers took pictures of more than 40 individual stars in a galaxy so far away its light dates back to when the universe was only half its present age. Cambridge, MA— ...

Much of astronomy is concerned with understanding distant phenomena, seeing the invisible, and studying the most extreme events in the Universe. But how does this pursuit help our daily lives here on ...

Using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), astronomers have achieved very-long-baseline interferometry test observations at 345 GHz, the highest-resolution such observations ever obtained from the ...

Cambridge, MA--A new image from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration — which includes scientists from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) — has uncovered strong and ...

TheThe Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO) is the largest satellite facility of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), part of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.

A few years ago, astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) uncovered one of the Milky Way's greatest secrets: an enormous, wave-shaped chain of gaseous clouds in our sun ...

CfA astronomers helped lead a study discovering changes in the bright ring around M87's black hole, confirming the theoretical understanding of the variable and turbulent flow of material around black ...