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, ...

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 ...

A newly analyzed planetary system has turned up a world orbiting at such a skewed angle that it defies the neat textbook ...

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 ...

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 ...

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has notched another milestone, capturing a direct image of a distant, frigid planet in a solar system unlike our own, astronomers announced on Tuesday (June 10).

Astronomers are increasingly finding planets that do not simply circle their stars in neat, clockwork ellipses but instead trace out paths that look more like intricate choreography. The latest ...

"There really is something very different about how these giant planets form versus how small planets like Earth form." Scientists have used data from NASA's retired planet-hunting space telescope ...

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 ...

Theia, the world that helped form the Moon, came from the Solar System. Chemical clues in Earth and Moon rocks reveal this close origin.