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How the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope Will Change Astronomy

Named for Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer and a pioneer who helped pave the way for the Hubble Space Telescope and other space-based observatories, the telescope will give astronomers ...
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Atomic and Molecular Physics

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian Atomic & Molecular Physics division focuses on combined laboratory and theoretical studies of atomic and molecular processes; laboratory physics and ...
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Gravitational Waves

The newest branch of astronomy doesn’t rely on light. Instead, it measures gravitational waves: tiny ripples in the structure of spacetime created by colliding black holes, neutron stars, or other ...
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Solar-Stellar Connections

The Sun is a star. While we take that fact for granted today, the discovery that stars are objects like our Sun was a profound one. The kinship between the Sun and stars means we can learn about ...
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Large Scale Structure

Everywhere we point telescopes in the sky, we see galaxies, going back to the earliest moments in history where galaxies could even exist. These galaxies fall into a pattern: the large-scale structure ...
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Event Horizon Telescope Makes Highest-Resolution Black Hole Detections from Earth

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration has conducted test observations achieving the highest resolution ever obtained from the surface of the Earth, by detecting light from the centers of ...
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Astronomers Discover Rare Distant Object in Sync with Neptune

This object, called 2020 VN40, is the first confirmed body that orbits the sun once for every ten orbits Neptune completes. Cambridge, MA — A team of astronomers led by the Center for Astrophysics | ...
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First atmosphere detected on a habitable-zone rocky world

In a major milestone in the search for life on other planets, astronomers have detected, for the first time, an atmosphere surrounding an Earth-like, rocky planet orbiting within the habitable zone of ...
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The Tilt in our Stars: The Shape of the Milky Way's Halo of Stars is Realized

New data throws out the textbook picture of a spherical stellar halo and reinforces a dynamic origin story of two galaxies that collided billions of years ago. Cambridge, Mass. – A new study has ...
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Astronomers Unveil Strong Magnetic Fields Spiraling at the Edge of Milky Way’s Central Black Hole

CfA astronomers led two new EHT studies that have produced the first polarized light image of the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy. Cambridge, MA--A new image from the ...
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AI Helps Astronomers Discover a New Type of Supernova

Astronomers have discovered what may be a massive star exploding while trying to swallow a black hole, offering an explanation for one of the strangest supernovae ever seen. Cambridge, MA - ...
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M87* One Year Later: Proof of a Persistent Black Hole Shadow

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 ...