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 SMA is a type of multiple-antenna observatory known as an interferometer, in this case consisting of eight radio dishes, each 6 meters in diameter. The eight antennas observe the same astronomical ...

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 ...

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 ...

An international team of scientists, including multiple astronomers from CfA, have made the first-ever detection of a mid-IR flare from Sgr A*. National Harbor, MD - Using the James Webb Space ...

Everything you’ve ever seen or experienced on Earth was once a nebulous collection of floating gas and dust. Science is starting to understand how those particles came to take the forms you recognize ...

The Magellan Telescopes both have 6.5-meter mirrors, making them the same size as the MMT Observatory at CfA’s Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO) in southern Arizona. The Las Campanas ...

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian Solar, Stellar & Planetary Sciences (SSP) division research is directed toward understanding star and planet formation and the physical processes in ...

From its establishment in 1966 as the Smithsonian Mount Hopkins Observatory, FLWO has hosted a world-class suite of telescopes designed for a wide variety of purposes. The largest visible-light ...

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 ...

Black holes in the modern sense were first predicted as a consequence of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity in 1915. These objects are so dense, they are surrounded by a boundary called an ...

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 | ...