The Center for Astrophysics (CfA) provides world-class opportunities for academic training and career development in astrophysics. It is home to the Harvard University Department of Astronomy, which ...

Cambridge, MA – Astronomers frequently observe carbon monoxide in planetary nurseries. The compound is ultra-bright and extremely common in protoplanetary disks — regions of dust and gas where planets ...

Cambridge, MA--A new image from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration — which includes scientists from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) — has uncovered strong and ...

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 ...

Cambridge, Mass. – A new study has revealed the true shape of the diffuse cloud of stars surrounding the disk of our galaxy. For decades, astronomers thought this cloud of stars — called the stellar ...

Cambridge, MA -- Signs of a planet transiting a star outside of the Milky Way galaxy may have been detected for the first time. This intriguing result, using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, opens up ...

An image from the ROMULUS computer simulation showing an intermediate mass galaxy, its bright central region with its supermassive black hole, and the locations (and velocities) of "wandering" ...

Cambridge, MA -- Astronomers have mapped out the chemicals inside of planetary nurseries in extraordinary detail. The newly unveiled maps reveal the locations of dozens of molecules within five ...

Using fast radio bursts to guide them, CfA astronomers have mapped the distribution of the Universe's ordinary matter in the space between galaxies, and detected the most distant fast radio bursts to ...

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 ...

Cambridge, MA -- It looks like fireflies flickering in the darkness. Slowly, more and more amass, lighting up the screen in large chunks and clusters. But this is not a video about insects. It's a ...

On the evening of December 12, 1921, as 53-year old astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt succumbed to cancer, heavy rains fell from the skies over Cambridge, Massachusetts. After nearly 30 years at the ...