CfA astronomers have found the fastest growing black hole on record, which could explain how some can get so big so quickly Cambridge (September 19, 2025)—A black hole is growing at one of the fastest ...

The new multi-year Event Horizon Telescope observations capture evolving polarization patterns in a neighboring galaxy's supermassive black hole. Cambridge, MA— The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) ...

Arcand won the award for her contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy as a popular science communicator and a leading expert in astronomy communications and data ...

The observable universe is home to more than a hundred billion galaxies of many shapes and sizes. The most distant galaxies are relics of an earlier era, so observing them is a glimpse at history.

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 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 ...

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian Office of Communications issues press releases and other media materials pertaining to the CfA's research and projects, as well as overseeing ...

For the first 380,000 years or so after the Big Bang, the entire universe was a hot soup of particles and photons, too dense for light to travel very far. However, as the cosmos expanded, it cooled ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...