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Image List

Scientists at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) have found that the unique features of supermassive stars align with the similarly unique features of little red dots, a class ...
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Visitor & Science Center

The Whipple Observatory Science Center is open for the Fall season on select Fridays beginning Friday, October 10, 2025. We are open on the following Fridays in Fall 2025 from 10am-3pm: Exhibits, ...
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Minor Planet Center

Along with the major planets — Earth, Jupiter, and so forth — the Solar System is home to many small bodies including asteroids, comets, Kuiper Belt objects like Pluto, and their satellites. While the ...
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The Tilt in our Stars: The Shape of the Milky Way's Halo of Stars is Realized

New data throws out the textbook picture of a spherical stellar halo and reinforces a dynamic origin story of two galaxies that collided billions of years ago. Cambridge, Mass. – A new study has ...
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Event Horizon Telescope Makes Highest-Resolution Black Hole Detections from Earth

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration has conducted test observations achieving the highest resolution ever obtained from the surface of the Earth, by detecting light from the centers of ...
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Planets Form in Organic Soups with Different Ingredients

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 ...
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Alien Planet Found Spiraling to its Doom around an Aging Star

Cambridge, Mass. – For the first time, astronomers have spotted an exoplanet whose orbit is decaying around an evolved, or older, host star. The stricken world appears destined to spiral closer and ...
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Astronomers May Have Discovered the First Planet Outside of Our Galaxy

Until now, astronomers have found all other known exoplanets and exoplanet candidates in the Milky Way galaxy, almost all less than about 3,000 light-years from Earth. Cambridge, MA-- Signs of a ...
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Scientists Make First-Ever Detection of Mid-IR Flares in Sgr A*

An international team of scientists, including multiple astronomers from CfA, have made the first-ever detection of a mid-IR flare from Sgr A*. National Harbor, MD - Using the James Webb Space ...
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Astronomers Discover Rare Distant Object in Sync with Neptune

This object, called 2020 VN40, is the first confirmed body that orbits the sun once for every ten orbits Neptune completes. Cambridge, MA — A team of astronomers led by the Center for Astrophysics | ...
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The Radcliffe Wave is Waving

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 ...
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Ready for its Close-up: New Technology Sharpens Images of Black Holes

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 ...