In the year prior to going supernova the red supergiant star now known as SN 2023ixf shed an unexpected amount of mass equivalent to the…
Posts published in “Harvard-Smithsonian Center For Astrophysics”
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This image taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows a spiral galaxy (bottom left) in front of a large galaxy cluster. New research leveraged an…
Supercomputer simulations on Frontera reveal the origins of ultra-massive black holes, the most massive objects thought to exist in the entire universe. Shown here is…
Astronomers using the International Gemini Observatory, operated by NSF’s NOIRLab, have discovered the closest-known black hole to Earth. This is the first unambiguous detection of…
Astrophysicists have devised a new way to verify the existence of the supermassive black hole Leo I*. A behemoth black holeA black hole is a…
An artist’s concept of the Kepler-1658 system. Kepler-1658b, orbiting with a period of just 3.8 days, was the first exoplanet candidate discovered by Kepler. Credit:…
This illustration depicts the exoplanet WASP-39 b and its star. Credit: Melissa Weiss/Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian New Webb Space Telescope observations of…
Artist’s impression of two white dwarf stars merging and creating a Type Ia supernova. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada An analysis of more than two decades’ worth…
Artist’s illustration of tidal disruption event AT2019dsg where a supermassive black hole spaghettifies and gobbles down a star. Some of the material is not consumed…
Artist’s illustration of a small Saturn-like planet discovered in the system LkCa 15. The planet resides within dense rings of dust and gas that surround…
Artist’s illustration of a planetary disk, a region of dust and gas where planets form. The zoom-in insert displays carbon monoxide molecules in the ice…
A Hubble image of a red galaxy acting as a gravitational lens for a more distant blue galaxy, bending its light into an arc. Exoplanets…
HD1, object in red, appears at the center of a zoom-in image. Credit: Harikane et al. Shining only ~300 million years after the Big BangThe…
Artist’s conception of Planet Nine. Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC) The Solar System has eight planets. In 2006, astronomers reclassified PlutoPluto is a dwarf planet in…
Giant Magellan Telescope. Credit: GMTO Corporation The U.S. Extremely Large Telescope Program, which includes the Giant Magellan Telescope, was ranked mission critical by the 2020…
In 1999 Mysterious Finger-Like Features Were Spotted on the Sun – Now Scientists Have an Explanation
In 1999 Mysterious Finger-Like Features Were Spotted on the Sun – Now Scientists Have an Explanation
Still image of several supra-arcade downflows, also described as “dark, finger-like features,” occurring in a solar flare. The downflows appear directly above the bright flare…
Artist’s illustration of the Local Bubble with star formation occurring on the bubble’s surface. Scientists have now shown how a chain of events beginning 14…
An infrared image of an infrared dark cloud (IRDC) taken by the IRAC camera on the Spitzer Space Telescope. The dark filament of material is…
Artist’s conception of the Milky Way galaxy. Credit: Pablo Carlos Budassi One of the characteristic features of modern cosmology is its description of how galaxies…
An artist’s impression of a star’s dusty debris disk, thought to be produced when asteroids or other planetesimals collide and fragment. Astronomers studying the debris…