There goes another old astronomers' tale about where planets can't form. Scientists used to have a hard time detecting alien worlds in open star clusters, leading some to wonder whether a mysterious ...
An illustration of the solar system and the planet's orbits around the sun When you're standing on Earth's surface, it's easy to forget that our planet is hurtling around the sun at more than 67,000 ...
Although the term itself immediately conjures the sort of alchemy at the heart of the best sci-fi fantasy, celestial mechanics —- the numerical nuts and bolts of how planetary bodies move, orbit and ...
The giant planets weren't always where we find them today. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune formed in a more compact ...
A new study of the orbit of comets suggests that the plane of the ecliptic, where the Earth's orbit rests, may not be the only major alignment in the solar system. By tracking the point where ...
In young solar systems emerging around baby stars, some orbits are more popular than others, resulting in ‘planet pile-ups’ and ‘planet deserts’ Computer simulations have revealed a plausible ...
Recently, the HARPS spectrograph and the Kepler satellite made a census of the planetary population around stars like our own, revealing a bounty of planetary systems. A follow-up study lead by ...
"This is really like looking at ourselves in a funhouse mirror." When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Skewed planetary pathways around ...
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe launched a year ago on a mission to touch the sun. Since that fiery early morning liftoff with the mission’s namesake, Eugene Parker, in attendance, the probe has made two ...
It’s rare for astronomers to spot a planet in a star cluster. That’s partly why a cluster called Messier 67 is so special: We now know that it has three planets orbiting stars. Even more exciting: One ...
There goes another old astronomers' tale about where planets can't form. Scientists used to have a hard time detecting alien worlds in open star clusters, leading some to wonder whether a mysterious ...
Computer simulations have revealed a plausible explanation for a phenomenon that has puzzled astronomers: Rather than occupying orbits at regular distances from a star, giant gas planets similar to ...
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