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, ...

Studying the orbits of thousands of exoplanets shows that large planets tend to have elliptical orbits, while smaller planets tend to have more circular orbits. This split coincides with several other ...

A newly discovered system of six planets circling a nearby Sun-like star may be the key to unlocking how planetary systems form. All between the size of Earth and Neptune, the worlds are orbiting in a ...

Still, science being science, we needed proof—and we got it in 1992, when two astronomers found two planets orbiting a pulsar ...

A pattern in the movements of a brown dwarf that orbits a Sun-like star is likely to be caused by a moon. If confirmed, this would be the first exomoon, that is a moon orbiting a planet that in turn ...

Astronomers are racing to explain peculiar orbits of faraway objects at the edge of our solar system. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it ...

Planets orbit their parent stars while separated by enormous distances – in our solar system, planets are like grains of sand in a region the size of a football field. The time that planets take to ...

For the inner four planets in this solar system, each planet orbits the sun three times for every two orbits of the planet immediately to its outside. For the fourth, fifth and sixth planets, they ...

Astronomers hunting for planets orbiting nearby stars similar to the Sun are looking for signs of rocky, Earth-like planets in a “habitable” zone, where conditions such as temperature and liquid water ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. An award-winning reporter writing about stargazing and the night sky. Illustration of the Solar System viewed from beyond Neptune, ...

A nearby binary star system is bereft of giant planets, but scientists think it may still be a decent place to look for life.