Articles about Planets – Page 2 of 2

Newfound dust belts suggest that Proxima Centauri has more than one alien planet

Astronomers created a stir last year when they reported that the closest star beyond our own solar system harbors a… Read More

Google Maps expands its interplanetary domain all the way out to Pluto

If you zoom way, way out on Google Maps, you can now find your way around places like Sputnik Planum,… Read More

Hours before its doom, NASA’s Cassini probe takes its parting shots at Saturn

The final pictures from NASA’s 13-year-long Cassini mission at Saturn are flowing in – and they’re good to the last drop.… Read More

Cassini orbiter’s team turns Saturn crash into cause for celebration – and for science

Twenty years after its launch to Saturn, NASA has set the Cassini orbiter on a course for certain destruction on… Read More

Project Blue tries again with crowdfunding campaign for planet-watching telescope

Project Blue is launching a second try to attract crowdfunding for a space telescope designed to study planets in the… Read More

Why these scientists argue that we are turning Earth into an alien planet

A trio of scientists has just laid out a new classification scheme for planets that would put Earth into a… Read More

Hubble keeps hope alive for water on potentially habitable TRAPPIST-1 planets

Do some of the Earth-sized planets around a dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1, just 40 light-years away, have liquid water? Newly… Read More

Podcast

Science fiction has won the war: Best-selling author Greg Bear on the genre’s new ‘golden age’

From the perspective of one of science fiction’s best-selling and longtime authors, the state of science fiction is golden. Golden… Read More

Scientists say there may be yet another unseen planet at solar system’s edge

Astronomers say they’ve found hints that an unseen planetary-mass object may lurk in the outer reaches of our solar system.… Read More

NASA’s Kepler space telescope points to 10 new planets in the habitable zone

Astronomers say they’ve used NASA’s Kepler space telescope to discover 10 Earth-sized planet candidates where life could lurk. The 10… Read More

NASA’s Juno orbiter maps Jupiter’s super cyclones and monstrous magnetism

NASA’s Juno orbiter has been sending back stunning pictures of Jupiter for months, but now the mission’s scientists are sharing… Read More

Astronomers use the music of the spheres to track TRAPPIST-1’s seventh planet

An international research team led by a University of Washington astronomer has worked out the intricate dance of seven planets… Read More

Newfound super-Earth could be the best planet for analyzing alien atmospheres

It’s not the closest potentially habitable planet, but astronomers say a world 40 percent wider than Earth could be one of… Read More

It’s a UFO! It’s a walnut? No … It’s Pan, one of Saturn’s weirdest-looking moons

Astronomers have long known that Pan, one of the “shepherd moons” in Saturn’s rings, had a weird shape. But it… Read More

Looking for life: Scientists find 7 possibly Earthlike planets orbiting ultracool star

A second look at an exoplanet system 40 light-years from Earth has brought a bonanza for astronomers: not two, not… Read More

Hunt for Planet Nine leads to mini-worlds

The hypothetical world known as Planet X or Planet Nine hasn’t yet been found, but thanks to the search, astronomers have discovered smaller… Read More

Proxima Centauri b confirmed! Potentially habitable planet orbits the star next door

The rumors you’ve heard are mostly true: Scientists say the star that’s closest to our solar system has a planet that… Read More

Revived Kepler mission confirms 104 new planets, and two could be a lot like Earth

Astronomers say they’ve confirmed the existence of 104 worlds to add to the list of extrasolar planets detected by NASA’s… Read More

Astronomers say they’ve spotted a dwarf planet that’s farther out than Pluto

Astronomers have found an icy world that ranges far beyond the orbit of Neptune and may well rank as a dwarf… Read More

Scientists explain how a giant impact created Mars’ past and present moons

Are Mars’ two moons asteroids that were captured by the Red Planet’s gravitational field, or are they the result of… Read More

Juno meets Jupiter: NASA’s giant mission to the giant planet hits its climax on video

Everything about NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter is big: the destination (giant planet, duh!), the cost ($1.1 billion), the travel… Read More

Have any alien civilizations ever existed? Astronomers say the chances are sky-high

Are we alone? Fifty-five years ago, astronomer Frank Drake came up with an equation that weighed the odds for aliens,… Read More

New Horizons provides the best close-up of Pluto some of us might ever see

Almost a year after NASA’s New Horizons probe flew past Pluto, the team behind the mission has put together a… Read More

Dwarfy McPlanetface? The icy world known as 2007 OR10 cries out for a name

Observations made by NASA’s Kepler space telescope suggest that the icy world known as 2007 OR10 is bigger than astronomers thought… Read More

1,284 new worlds! Kepler mission doubles its tally of planets in one fell swoop

The scientists behind NASA’s Kepler mission are using statistics to put their campaign to identify new planets into overdrive: New software… Read More

View of ultracool dwarf star with planets

NASA keeps its eye on a trio of potentially habitable planets just 40 light-years away

Three potentially habitable and definitely weird planets have been detected orbiting an ultracool dwarf star that’s 40 light-years away from… Read More

Hubble Space Telescope spots a moon circling faraway dwarf planet Makemake

Chalk up another moon for the dwarf planets: Astronomers have sifted through imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope to find a tiny satellite circling… Read More

Siberian unicorns? Five incredible science tales that aren’t April Fool’s jokes

Unicorns are real! Scientists propose cloaking device to protect Earth from aliens! Glow-in-the-dark skin grown in lab! Those may sound… Read More

‘Planet Nine’? Astronomers boost the case for a large, unseen Planet X

For decades, astronomers have gone back and forth over whether a “Planet X” exists on the edge of our solar… Read More

Postal Service geeks out with space stamps for Pluto, planets, the moon and Star Trek

For the first time since 1991, Pluto and the solar system’s eight bigger planets are getting their own postage stamps… Read More