Home | Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
WEBThe Center for Astrophysics is a collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Harvard College Observatory that’s designed to ask big questions about the universe, build the tools needed to answer them, and …
Solar System - Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
WEBThe Mysterious Worlds We Know Best The heart of the Solar System is the Sun, a yellow star of moderate mass somewhere in the middle of its life cycle. That star is what drives most of the physical processes in the system, from heating Earth’s atmosphere to allow life, to gently pushing asteroids around and giving comets their tails. The rest of the Solar …
Cosmology - Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
WEBThe Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), as part of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, manages Chandra’s day-to-day operations, providing spacecraft control, observation planning, and data processing for astronomers. Chandra is one of NASA’s orbiting Great Observatories, along with the Hubble.
Black Holes | Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
WEBBlack holes are some of the most fascinating and mind-bending objects in the cosmos. The very thing that characterizes a black hole also makes it hard to study: its intense gravity. All the mass in a black hole is concentrated in a tiny region, surrounded by a boundary called the “event horizon ...
Stellar Structure and Evolution - Harvard–Smithsonian Center …
WEBStellar Structure and Evolution. Stars are the source of almost all of the light our eyes see in the sky. Nuclear fusion is what makes a star what it is: the creation of new atomic nuclei within the star’s core. Many of stars’ properties — how long they live, what color they appear, how they die — are largely determined by how massive ...
About - Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
WEBThe Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian is a collaboration between Harvard and Smithsonian designed to ask — and ultimately answer — humanity’s greatest unresolved questions about the nature of the universe.
Theoretical Astrophysics - Harvard–Smithsonian Center for …
WEBTheoretical Astrophysics. 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 into a full understanding, and makes predictions about phenomena we haven’t observed yet.
Exoplanets - Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
WEBNASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is a space observatory designed to look for exoplanets in orbit around 200,000 nearby bright stars, with a particular interest in identifying small planets. Astronomers from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian are part of the scientific team to analyze TESS data, as well as ...
Large Scale Structure - Harvard–Smithsonian Center for …
WEBCenter for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian scientists lead many studies of the large-scale structure of the universe and baryon acoustic oscillations. Two examples include: Using surveys of thousands of galaxies across the sky to create a three-dimensional map of the cosmic web and galaxy-free voids.
Research - Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
WEBResearch at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian covers a broad range of fields, from theory to laboratory astrophysics and observation. Learn more about the specific fields of science that our researchers and engineers focus on in their pursuit of asking, testing, and answering the greatest unresolved questions about our Universe.