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

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 you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. There are currently more than 5,800 known planets beyond the solar system. Artist Martin Vargic ...

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, ...

In the distant future—about six billion or seven billion years hence—the sun will start to die, swelling up into a bloated red giant. In a span of several hundred million years it will blow away its ...

Planets orbiting dead stars known as white dwarfs might be able to remain habitable thanks to general relativity subtly altering their motion. When stars like our sun run out of fuel, they expand and ...

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 ...