Astronomers have peered through the atmosphere of a planet beyond the solar system, mapping its 3D structure for the first ...

White dwarf stars could host habitable planets. Fast planetary rotation reduces cloud cover, keeping surface temperatures stable.

Asteroids that orbit close to the Earth inevitably cause us some anxiety due to the even remote possibility of a collision. But their proximity also offers ample opportunities to learn more about the ...

Trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) are icy bodies that vary widely in size, from large dwarf planets like Pluto and Eris—each ...

The potentially hazardous asteroid Bennu probably won't hit Earth. But this study shows the damage a space rock of its size ...

According to a recent YouGov poll, 35% of Americans think Pluto is not a planet. But they are all wrong—kind of. To get to the bottom of whether Pluto is a planet, I tracked down planetary scientist ...

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned from space with a sample of an asteroid named Bennu and scientists got to dive into a tale of rock, ice and water that hints at how life could have formed on Earth.

The number of planets that orbit the sun depends on what you mean by “planet,” and that’s not so easy to define ...

Here are some of this month’s highlights. As we discussed last month, late January and early February will provide a stage for a Planet Parade, with six planets lining up in the night sky.

All forms of Earth life have specific chemicals in their makeup, such as amino acids and sugars. Scientists have known that ...

The organic material on the dwarf planet Ceres is probably of extra-Ceresian origin: a recent study concludes that asteroids from the outer asteroid belt that crashed into the dwarf planet brought ...

the researchers looked for previously unknown deposits of organic material on dwarf planet Ceres. With its location in the middle of the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, the body ...