When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Planetary scientists are split, oscillating between two main theories that explain the order in ...

what if a planet did not need a star at all? This is the provocative question at the heart of an emerging astronomical debate, wherein the discovery of rogue planets-worlds free-floating in the galaxy ...

Astronomers are investigating a strange class of exoplanets known as eccentric warm Jupiters — massive gas giants that orbit their stars in unexpected, elongated paths. Unlike their close-orbiting ...

Illustration comparing the planets of the Solar System and the Sun on the same scale. The planets are shown to scale relative to each other but their distances are not. From left to right the bodies ...

Astronomers have discovered that aging stars may be devouring their closest giant planets as they swell into red giants. Using NASA’s TESS telescope to study nearly half a million stars, scientists ...

The inner planets Mercury and Venus will both be visible in the east-southeast sky before sunrise on Tuesday, Nov. 25. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

New discoveries and fresh looks at familiar worlds show how far exoplanet science has come — and how much remains unknown. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate ...

Most of the exoplanets we’ve discovered have been in relatively tight orbits around their host stars, allowing us to track them as they repeatedly loop around them. But we’ve also discovered a handful ...

It was one of humanity’s greater vanities that we ever questioned whether there are any planets in the universe beyond the eight in our little solar system. Our sun is a perfectly ordinary star, ...

There are a couple of ways that scientists can date planets, so which planets formed first in our solar system? When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s ...