The search for life beyond Earth is a key driver of modern astronomy and planetary science. The U.S. is building multiple major telescopes and planetary probes to advance this search. However, the ...

When a distant planet appears as a point of light in a telescope, it's hard to imagine what things are like at the surface. Does rain fall? Is the atmosphere thick, or dissipating into space? How ...

Banner image: A glass block marks Saturn's spot in the solar system in a new scale model on the CU Boulder campus. (Credit: CU Boulder) Have you ever wanted to travel to Neptune? Thanks to an updated ...

Researchers at Penn state have developed a new method for calculating the habitable zone around stars. The computer model based on new greenhouse gas databases provides a tool to better estimate which ...

The discovery of a planet that is far too massive for its sun is calling into question what was previously understood about the formation of planets and their solar systems. The discovery of a planet ...

An international research team has discovered a new planet so young that it has yet to emerge from the womb of matter where it is forming. This is the youngest protoplanet discovered to date. It’s ...

Get your scrolling hand ready. An interactive web page has created a scale model of the solar system, where the moon is the size of just one pixel. Michelle Starr is CNET's science editor, and she ...

Over the past several years, astronomers have discovered a number of planets within so-called circumbinary systems, including Kepler-34(AB)b — a planet reminiscent of Star Wars’ Tatooine. Now, using ...

An enormous alien planet — one that is 11 times more massive than Jupiter — was discovered in the most distant orbit yet found around a single parent star. The newfound exoplanet, dubbed HD 106906 b, ...