Home | Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
The 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 share the resulting discoveries with the world. "The coming decade will be an extremely exciting time for ...
Galaxy Formation and Evolution - Center for Astrophysics
Galaxy Formation and Evolution. Galaxies are home to most of the stars in the universe, and they form the beads of the cosmic jewelry that defines structure on the largest scales. But galaxies haven’t always been around, and they have changed over the universe’s 13.8 billion-year history. Astronomers study the ways galaxies form and evolve ...
Solar System - Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
While astronomers have discovered thousands of other worlds orbiting distant stars, our best knowledge about planets, moons, and life comes from one place. The Solar System provides the only known example of a habitable planet, the only star we can observe close-up, and the only worlds we can visit with space probes. Solar System research is essential for understanding the origin and evolution ...
Dark Energy and Dark Matter | Center for Astrophysics | Harvard ...
All the atoms and light in the universe together make up less than five percent of the total contents of the cosmos. The rest is composed of dark matter and dark energy, which are invisible but dominate the structure and evolution of the universe. Dark matter makes up most of the mass of galaxies and galaxy clusters, and is responsible for the …
About | Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
About. The 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. Founded in 1973, the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian is an ongoing collaboration between the ...
Cosmology | Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
The 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.
Theoretical Astrophysics - Harvard–Smithsonian Center for …
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. Theoretical astrophysics includes mathematical models for astronomical systems, along with templates to fit ...
Black Holes | Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
Black 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”. Nothing that crosses that boundary can return to the outside universe, not even light.
Research - Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Research. Research at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian ranges across many disciplines, from astronomy and astrophysics to improving life on Earth through science education, climate research, and technology development. Scientists and engineers at CfA are involved in international collaborations to create the next generation ...
Large Scale Structure - Harvard–Smithsonian Center for …
Everywhere we point telescopes in the sky, we see galaxies, going back to the earliest moments in history where galaxies could even exist. These galaxies fall into a pattern: the large-scale structure of the universe. This structure is a huge web shaped by gravity, with most galaxies and galaxy clusters lying along the strands. On even grander scales, what became galaxies and clusters began as ...