A distant star has just been caught in the act of destroying one of its own worlds, a violent finale astronomers have long predicted but never directly seen. The event offers a preview of the kind of ...

When you put your hand out the window of a moving car, you feel a force pushing against you called drag. This force opposes a moving vehicle, and it’s part of the reason why your car naturally slows ...

In a real-life twist on Star Wars' Tatooine—a harsh desert planet with twin suns and a criminal underbelly—astronomers have found a bizarre new world that orbits two stars at a perfect right angle.

Astronomers have made the first measurement of spin-orbit alignment for a distant ‘super-Jupiter’ planet, demonstrating a technique that could enable breakthroughs in the quest to understand how ...

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 ...

All of our solar system’s planets are lining up in the night sky at once this week. This extraordinary celestial event will see the sky scattered with seven visible planets in what is known as a great ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. An award-winning reporter writing about stargazing and the night sky. An object has been discovered orbiting the sun far beyond ...

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. The planet, about ...

A sunlike star next door called Alpha Centauri A may host a huge planet, researchers report in two studies in press in Astrophysical Journal Letters. The planet candidate orbits in its star’s ...

In the cold, dark outskirts of planetary systems far beyond the reach of the known planets, mysterious gas giants and planetary masses silently orbit their stars — sometimes thousands of astronomical ...

Chris Impey receives funding from the National Science Foundation. Planets orbit their parent stars while separated by enormous distances – in our solar system, planets are like grains of sand in a ...