A new computational model suggests that Uranus' and Neptune's cores may be less icy than their "ice giant" nickname suggests.

In the Star Wars movies fictional planets are covered with forests, oceans, deserts, and volcanoes. But new models from a team of MIT, NASA, and Carnegie scientists begin to describe an even wider ...

The search for life beyond Earth is a key driver of modern astronomy and planetary science. The U.S. is building multiple major telescopes and planetary probes to advance this search. However, the ...

When astronomers first cataloged some of the closest orbiting rocky exoplanets, they wrote them off as bare, airless cinders, ...

The newly identified cluster of Kuiper Belt objects lies about 4 billion miles from the Sun, offering fresh clues about how ...

Circumbinary planets experience a time varying irradiation pattern as they orbit their two host stars. In this work, we present the first detailed study of the atmospheric effects of this irradiation ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. An award-winning reporter writing about stargazing and the night sky. Is there an unseen planet — a "planet X" or "Planet Nine" — ...

The first exoplanet discovery in 1995 around a Sun-like star challenged the then-prevailing model of planetary system formation based solely on our solar system, revealing the existence of massive ...