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 ...

Scientists now estimate that there are over a trillion galaxies in the Universe. Many follow broad classification patterns, but no two are exactly alike. The variety of galaxies we see gives us a ...

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian High Energy Astrophysics division focuses on X-ray astronomy and instrumentation involved in observations of high-energy sources. This research aims ...

Understanding the cosmos involves both observation and theory. Observation provides real-world data about how stars, galaxies, and other objects in space behave. Theory connects that data together ...

The twin Magellan Telescopes in Chile are each 6.5 meter optical telescopes. These telescopes are both equipped with instruments to take images and spectra of light from a wide variety of astronomical ...

Our department is young in spirit but has a century-old tradition of exceptional graduate students and faculty. Our teaching and research interests span the entire Universe with exciting observational ...

Everything we can observe in the Universe takes place in four dimensions—the three dimensions of space and the dimension of time. This basic system, known as spacetime, can distort in the presence of ...

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian Theoretical Astrophysics (TA) division uses theoretical models and computer simulations to understand a variety of fundamental astrophysical ...

Cambridge, MA — A team of astronomers led by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian has discovered a rare object far beyond Neptune, from a class known as trans-Neptunian objects, that is ...

Using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), astronomers have achieved very-long-baseline interferometry test observations at 345 GHz, the highest-resolution such observations ever obtained from the ...

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 ...

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" ...