The status of Pluto not withstanding, our solar system has 8 planets, but one astronomer believes we used to have a ninth that was eaten by the sun.

Somewhere beyond Neptune, the Kuiper Belt is bent. Not by much, and not in a way any known planet can account for. A study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters in ...

The Sun may have once swallowed a rocky planet with a mass 5 to 10 times that of Earth. This scenario could explain why our ...

For the first time since 2008, two new planets are being added to one of northern Maine's most famous — and scientifically accurate — roadside attractions. Dwarf planets Haumea and Makemake are the ...

In the Star Wars movies fictional planets are covered with forests, oceans, deserts, and volcanoes. But new models from a team of MIT, NASA, and Carnegie scientists begin to describe an even wider ...

To better understand why the planets have variable compositions, we have to first understand the process of how stars form. While the composition of gas and dust in a precursor molecular cloud is ...

New research on super-Earths and mini-Neptunes suggests more Earth-like planets may exist. The new study by Rice University researchers Sho Shibata and Andre Izidoro presents a compelling new model ...

When you see art of our solar system as the planet orbit the sun, you may notice that Earth's orbit has a tilt. It is not a perfect circle. What's more, Earth is not the only planet that displays such ...

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 ...