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 ...

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

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.

A possible cousin of Pluto seems to be circling the far reaches of the solar system. The dwarf planet candidate 2017 OF201 travels in a superwide orbit, with the sun relatively near one end of its ...

Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006. Our solar system may have a ninth planet after all, researchers say. The possibility that an additional planet may be hidden far into the solar system ...

The Kuiper Belt object Altjira was thought to be a binary, but closer analysis suggests that it is highly likely to be a triple system This raises the question of the three-body problem; if Altjira ...

"Astronomers have been searching for exoplanets that are likely precursors to hot Jupiters for more than two decades, so I was very surprised — and excited — to find one." When you purchase through ...

Things have been a mess since Pluto's demotion. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union ...

A team of scientists at the Institute for Advanced Study School of Natural Sciences in Princeton, New Jersey, might have found a new dwarf planet, potentially leading to more evidence of a theoretical ...

Planets that orbit white dwarf stars should be too hot to host alien life, theories suggest. But a new study accounting for Einstein's general relativity may rewrite that rule. When you purchase ...