Astronomers created a stir last year when they reported that the closest star beyond our own solar system harbors a potentially habitable planet, but now fresh evidence hints that there… Read More
If you zoom way, way out on Google Maps, you can now find your way around places like Sputnik Planum, Seville Mons, Aphrodite Terra and Damascus Sulcus. Those are destinations… Read More
The final pictures from NASA’s 13-year-long Cassini mission at Saturn are flowing in – and they’re good to the last drop. Or even better, good to the last moonset. Raw images,… Read More
Twenty years after its launch to Saturn, NASA has set the Cassini orbiter on a course for certain destruction on Friday – but there’s a decidedly positive spin to the… Read More
Project Blue is launching a second try to attract crowdfunding for a space telescope designed to study planets in the Alpha Centauri system, months after the first try fizzled. This… Read More
A trio of scientists has just laid out a new classification scheme for planets that would put Earth into a hybrid category, making the transition from a diverse, photosynthetic-based biosphere… Read More
Do some of the Earth-sized planets around a dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1, just 40 light-years away, have liquid water? Newly reported findings from the Hubble Space Telescope give astrobiologists continued… Read More
From the perspective of one of science fiction’s best-selling and longtime authors, the state of science fiction is golden. Golden age, that is. Greg Bear, whose popular works include three… Read More
Astronomers say they’ve found hints that an unseen planetary-mass object may lurk in the outer reaches of our solar system. And no, they’re not talking about Planet Nine, Planet X,… Read More
Astronomers say they’ve used NASA’s Kepler space telescope to discover 10 Earth-sized planet candidates where life could lurk. The 10 prospects are a part of a larger pool of 219… Read More
NASA’s Juno orbiter has been sending back stunning pictures of Jupiter for months, but now the mission’s scientists are sharing their first peer-reviewed findings about the planet’s previously unseen polar… Read More
An international research team led by a University of Washington astronomer has worked out the intricate dance of seven planets circling an ultracool dwarf star known as TRAPPIST-1, nailing down… Read More
It’s not the closest potentially habitable planet, but astronomers say a world 40 percent wider than Earth could be one of the best places to target in the search for life… Read More
Astronomers have long known that Pan, one of the “shepherd moons” in Saturn’s rings, had a weird shape. But it took this week’s high-resolution images from the Cassini orbiter to… Read More
A second look at an exoplanet system 40 light-years from Earth has brought a bonanza for astronomers: not two, not three, but seven alien worlds – some of which could have… Read More
The hypothetical world known as Planet X or Planet Nine hasn’t yet been found, but thanks to the search, astronomers have discovered smaller worlds on the solar system’s edge. Mapping such objects could… Read More
The rumors you’ve heard are mostly true: Scientists say the star that’s closest to our solar system has a planet that could be at the right temperature for liquid water and… Read More
Astronomers say they’ve confirmed the existence of 104 worlds to add to the list of extrasolar planets detected by NASA’s Kepler K2 mission, and at least two of them appear… Read More
Astronomers have found an icy world that ranges far beyond the orbit of Neptune and may well rank as a dwarf planet alongside Pluto. The newly detected object, designated 2015 RR245,… Read More
Are Mars’ two moons asteroids that were captured by the Red Planet’s gravitational field, or are they the result of an ancient smash-up? Astronomers have now laid out a series… Read More
Everything about NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter is big: the destination (giant planet, duh!), the cost ($1.1 billion), the travel time (five years to cruise 1.8 million miles), even the solar… Read More
Are we alone? Fifty-five years ago, astronomer Frank Drake came up with an equation that weighed the odds for aliens, and now two astronomers have tweaked the formula to come… Read More
Almost a year after NASA’s New Horizons probe flew past Pluto, the team behind the mission has put together a long mosaic strip that includes all of the highest-resolution images.… Read More
Observations made by NASA’s Kepler space telescope suggest that the icy world known as 2007 OR10 is bigger than astronomers thought –and that’s adding to the pressure to give the probable… Read More
The scientists behind NASA’s Kepler mission are using statistics to put their campaign to identify new planets into overdrive: New software that automates the process has verified 1,284 candidates as genuine… Read More
Three potentially habitable and definitely weird planets have been detected orbiting an ultracool dwarf star that’s 40 light-years away from Earth. They’re too far to visit anytime soon, but close… Read More
Chalk up another moon for the dwarf planets: Astronomers have sifted through imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope to find a tiny satellite circling Makemake. Makemake (pronounced Mah-kay-mah-kay, like the Rapa Nui deity after… Read More
Unicorns are real! Scientists propose cloaking device to protect Earth from aliens! Glow-in-the-dark skin grown in lab! Those may sound like April Fool’s headlines, but they’re actually amped-up twists on… Read More
For decades, astronomers have gone back and forth over whether a “Planet X” exists on the edge of our solar system – and now two researchers have laid out new evidence… Read More
For the first time since 1991, Pluto and the solar system’s eight bigger planets are getting their own postage stamps – thanks to a U.S. Postal Service cosmopalooza that also… Read More