Across the Milky Way and beyond, planetary systems appear to fall into a few recurring blueprints, and recent exoplanet ...

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 ...

Could the icy moons of our solar system hold life beyond our planet? Keith Cooper looks at how planetary scientists plan to ...

When 'Oumuamua traversed our solar system in 2017 it was the first confirmed Interstellar Object (ISO) to do so. Then in 2019, Comet 2l/Borisov did the same thing. These are the only two confirmed ...

Neptune’s supersonic winds and icy storms revealed a planet so extreme that it forever changed our picture of the solar ...

Chris Impey receives funding from the National Science Foundation. Planets orbit their parent stars while separated by enormous distances – in our solar system, planets are like grains of sand in a ...

The giant planets weren't always where we find them today. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune formed in a more compact configuration and later underwent a violent reshuffling that scattered them to ...

All of our solar system’s planets are lining up in the night sky at once this week. This extraordinary celestial event will see the sky scattered with seven visible planets in what is known as a great ...

Scientists are tracking a large gas planet experiencing quite a quandary as it orbits extremely close to a young star—a predicament never previously observed. This exoplanet, as planets beyond our ...

In the cold, distant reaches of the Solar System, far beyond Pluto, astronomers have just identified what could be a new dwarf planet. It's called 2017 OF 201, a rock that appears to be some 700 ...

There are a couple of ways that scientists can date planets, so which planets formed first in our solar system? When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s ...

The solar system is 4.54 billion years old, based on rock dating. Gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) likely formed first. Ice giants (Uranus and Neptune) probably formed next. Rocky planets formed last, ...