The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) was founded in 1890 under Smithsonian Secretary Samuel Pierpont Langley as a research bureau of the Smithsonian Institution. It began its tenure ...

Throughout the last century of scientific discovery, as well as the history of popular culture and science fiction, black holes have been a source of fascination and mystery. One thing is certain: ...

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian Radio & Geoastronomy (R&G) division explores the Universe using the low-energy portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, including the radio, ...

Space doesn’t have air, but it does have weather. This weather comes from the Sun: the high-energy light emitted by the Sun and the electrically charged particles known as the solar wind, which can ...

As astronomers build increasingly larger observatories capable of seeing more objects in the sky, the amount of data they collect has gone beyond what humans can analyze without help. Instead, ...

Finding and describing new exoplanets using TESS and other observatories. TESS is designed to observe stars closer to the Solar System than those studied by other observatories, providing targets for ...

The Sun is the best laboratory we have for studying stars and how they influence the planets orbiting them. Space- and ground-based observatories monitor day-to-day fluctuations in the Sun’s light, ...

Applications are invited for Postdoctoral Research Positions in the Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC) at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Applications are invited for a ...

Using NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory and other X-ray telescopes to look for the “missing” atoms astronomers know exist from the census of the universe’s contents. The IGM emits some light on its own ...

Capturing the first image of a supermassive black hole using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). This image of the black hole at the center of the nearby galaxy M87 reveals how gravitation affects the ...

One profound result of Einstein’s theory of general relativity: gravity bends the path of light, much as it affects the path of massive objects. Very massive astronomical bodies, such as galaxies and ...

Supernovas are some of the brightest events in the universe, occasionally outshining entire galaxies at their peak. Many supernovas can be seen from billions of light-years away, and nearby supernovas ...