SPHERE’s detailed images of dusty rings around young stars offer a rare glimpse into the hidden machinery of planet formation ...

As shocking as it sounds today, prior to the 1990s, scientists couldn't be certain that stars beyond the sun also had planets orbiting them. Since the discovery of the first extra-solar planet, or ...

The possibility that there might be a large, unknown planet lurking in the outer Solar System far beyond Pluto has long been a staple of science fiction. But for the past decade, astronomers have been ...

For nearly a decade, astronomers have been searching for a hypothetical giant planet that may lurk in the distant reaches of the solar system. We could be on the brink of discovering this new world, ...

This story is part of Short Wave's series Space Camp about all the weird, wonderful things happening in the universe. Check out the rest of the series. If you were born in the last century you might ...

This artist’s concept depicts one of the solar system’s inner planets slamming into Earth after being nudged on a collision course by a passing star. Such a world-shattering cataclysm is extremely ...

Most astronomers would love to find a planet, but Mike Brown may be the only one proud of having killed one. Thanks to his research, Pluto, the solar system’s ninth planet, was removed from the ...

For centuries, humans have gazed at the stars, trying to understand what lies beyond the familiar planets we know. From Mercury’s blazing orbit near the Sun to Neptune’s icy edge, our Solar System has ...

Mark Sykes says that if a non-stellar object is massive enough to be round and orbits a star, it ought to be a planet. The key here is that once an object gets that big, important geophysical ...