www.cfa.harvard.edu

Gigantic Cavity in Space Sheds New Light on How Stars Form

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 ...
www.cfa.harvard.edu

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 ...
www.cfa.harvard.edu

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 ...
www.cfa.harvard.edu

Astronomers Discover New Building Blocks of Complex Organic Matter

The element carbon is a building block for life, both on Earth and potentially elsewhere in the vast reaches of space. There should be a lot of carbon in space, but surprisingly, it's not always easy ...
www.cfa.harvard.edu

Billions of Celestial Objects Revealed in Gargantuan Survey of the Milky Way

Cambridge, MA – A new astronomical survey is a portrait of gargantuan proportions. It shows the staggering number of stars bristling among the wispy bands of dust in our home galaxy, the Milky Way.
www.cfa.harvard.edu

Ready for its Close-up: New Technology Sharpens Images of Black Holes

Using new computational algorithms, scientists have measured a sharp ring of light predicted to originate from photons whipping around the back of a supermassive black hole. Cambridge, MA – When ...
www.cfa.harvard.edu

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 | ...
www.cfa.harvard.edu

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 ...
www.cfa.harvard.edu

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 - ...
www.cfa.harvard.edu

Astronomers May Have Discovered the First Planet Outside of Our Galaxy

Until now, astronomers have found all other known exoplanets and exoplanet candidates in the Milky Way galaxy, almost all less than about 3,000 light-years from Earth. Cambridge, MA-- Signs of a ...
www.cfa.harvard.edu

Astronomers Find Far-flung “Super Earths” Are Not Farfetched

A new study shows that planets bigger than Earth and smaller than Neptune are common outside the Solar System. These results are another example of how planetary systems can be different from our ...
www.cfa.harvard.edu

The Radcliffe Wave is Waving

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 ...