Studying the orbits of thousands of exoplanets shows that large planets tend to have elliptical orbits, while smaller planets tend to have more circular orbits. This split coincides with several other ...

EVANSTON, Ill. — Except for the fact that we call it home, for centuries astronomers didn’t have any particular reason to believe that our solar system was anything special in the universe. But, ...

The first exoplanet ever discovered in 1995 was what we now call a "hot Jupiter," a planet as massive as Jupiter with an orbital period of just a few days. Today, hot Jupiters are thought to have ...

In 2025, astronomers sharpened their view of the planetary system around Proxima Centauri — the sun's closest stellar ...

Surprised astronomers just discovered a world that blurs the line between planet and stellar remnant, hiding in a system ...

Scientists have used data from NASA's retired planet-hunting space telescope 'Kepler' to discover that small and large worlds have very different upbringings. The team found that larger planets on non ...

Astronomers Brown and Batygin have presented accumulating evidence supporting the existence of Planet Nine, a hypothesized planet in our solar system, based on the unusual orbital characteristics of ...

Astronomers hunting for planets orbiting nearby stars similar to the Sun are looking for signs of rocky, Earth-like planets in a “habitable” zone, where conditions such as temperature and liquid water ...

With sapphire waterfalls, lava rain and orbits around dead stars, these distant worlds push the limits of what’s possible.

An object eight times the mass of Jupiter may have swooped around the sun, coming superclose to Mars' present-day orbit before shoving four of the solar system's planets onto a different course. When ...

"There really is something very different about how these giant planets form versus how small planets like Earth form." When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission ...