In our solar system, Earth is one of but eight planets – nine, if you really want to count Pluto – and the only one remotely hospitable to life. And as technology advances, astronomers only expect to ...

In the beginning, when planets were newborn, they glowed like furnaces, vast oceans of molten rock wrapped in heavy blankets ...

Detecting exoplanets at all is difficult—they typically emit much less than 1% of a host star's brightness. Eclipse mapping requires measuring small fractions of that total as a planet circles behind ...

Recently, an exoplanet just a short 15 light-years from Earth was discovered, setting the scientific community abuzz. This newly found celestial body boasts a unique gravitational pull, a feature that ...

The team of astronomers behind the find suggested it could help us better understand planet and moon formation in our solar system and beyond the Milky Way. The team was able to make the first-ever ...

How will NASA's upcoming Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) mission differentiate Earth-sized exoplanets from other exoplanets, specifically Earth-sized exoplanets within the habitable zone, also ...

Just decades after the first exoplanets were identified, our database of the distant worlds—monitored by the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute—has breached a new threshold. Now, astronomers have ...

After marking the 30th anniversary of the discovery of the first exoplanet around a sun-like star, we now look forward to what the next 30 years might offer. With the number of exoplanets having ...

Exoplanets are planets outside Earth's solar system. In 1995, a gas giant named 51 Pegasi b, which orbits a star similar to Earth's sun, etched its name in history as the first exoplanet ever ...

Scientists have gotten a never-before-seen look at an area around a large exoplanet 625 light-years away where moons like the one orbiting Earth could potentially form. "Moons likely outnumber planets ...

In our solar system, Earth is one of but eight planets – nine, if you really want to count Pluto – and the only one remotely hospitable to life. But look beyond our sun's gravitational pull into the ...