Southwest Research Institute scientists propose a new model for the formation of compact exoplanetary systems that contain multiple rocky planets in tight orbits around their star. In this model, ...

Scientists using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have observed a rare type of exoplanet, or planet outside our solar system, whose atmospheric composition challenges our understanding of how it ...

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, ...

Astronomers Identified a Lemon-Shaped Planet Displaying a Feature 'Unlike Anything Observed Before' ...

As planetary systems evolve, gravitational interactions between planets can fling some of them into eccentric elliptical orbits around the host star, or even out of the system altogether. Smaller ...

Exoplanet PSR J2322-2650b, orbiting a pulsar, possesses an unprecedented helium-and-carbon-dominated atmosphere, characterized by molecular carbon (C3 and C2) and soot clouds, a composition unlike any ...

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 ...

Planet hunters have grown used to strange worlds, but a handful of discoveries now point to something even more radical: giant planets that loop around their stars on orbits so skewed they almost defy ...

Astronomers have long searched for life within a rather narrow ring around a star, the "habitable zone," where a planet ...