How can we expand the limits of human knowledge further into the unknown? The Center for Astrophysics is a collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Harvard College ...

The Milky Way is our galactic home, part of the story of how we came to be. Astronomers have learned that it’s a large spiral galaxy, similar to many others, but also different in ways that reflect ...

Matter and energy are the two basic components of the entire Universe. An enormous challenge for scientists is that most of the matter in the Universe is invisible and the source of most of the energy ...

Interstellar space — the region between stars inside a galaxy — is home to clouds of gas and dust. This interstellar medium contains primordial leftovers from the formation of the galaxy, detritus ...

Most of the atoms in the universe are either hydrogen or helium, formed within the first few minutes after the Big Bang. The other elements are mostly made by nuclear fusion in stars, especially ...

Capturing the first image of a supermassive black hole using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). This image of the black hole at the center of the nearby galaxy M87 reveals how gravitation affects the ...

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 ...

One profound result of Einstein’s theory of general relativity: gravity bends the path of light, much as it affects the path of massive objects. Very massive astronomical bodies, such as galaxies and ...

Mapping the structure of galaxy clusters using the hot plasma that fills the space between galaxies. Even though this plasma’s density is low, its temperature can reach hundreds of millions of degrees ...

Cambridge, MA-- Astronomers analyzing 3D maps of the shapes and sizes of nearby molecular clouds have discovered a gigantic cavity in space. The sphere-shaped void, described today in The ...

Black holes are some of the most fascinating and mind-bending objects in the cosmos. The very thing that characterizes a black hole also makes it hard to study: its intense gravity. All the mass in a ...

When a star like our Sun dies, it doesn’t explode into a supernova or collapse into a black hole. Instead, it gently sheds its outer layers, which form a beautiful cloud called a “planetary nebula”, ...