The origin of super-Earths and sub-Neptunes has been revealed in a system of four young planets that are dramatically losing ...

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, ...

A NASA Hubble Space Telescope observation program called OPAL (Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy) obtains long-term baseline observations of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in order to understand ...

Some of the most puzzling worlds in our telescopes’ catalogs may not be worlds at all, but relics from the first instants ...

When the Sun runs out of hydrogen fuel and expands into a red giant, it will eventually encompass the innermost planets of the solar system, out to about Earth’s orbit. Being closer to our enlarged ...

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 ...

As J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in The Fellowship of the Ring, “Not all those who wander are lost.” But in the case of planets, it’s possible that most of them are. Rogue planets—planets that are adrift in ...