Planetary systems such as our solar system take hundreds of millions of years to evolve. Since humanity has only existed for a sliver of that time, astronomers have only observed planetary systems at ...

Active small bodies—including comets, active asteroids, icy minor planets, and transitional objects—occupy a unique position in planetary science. As ...

Might the first moments of planet formation be more understandable than ever before? Fresh observations suggest that the creation of worlds such as our own is perhaps happening right in front of us, ...

Scientists have recently unveiled a remarkable discovery in the outer reaches of our solar system: a space fossil located 4 billion miles past Pluto, covered in unidentified organic molecules. This ...

Peering through a cosmic keyhole at distant baby star, astronomers may have opened a new window on the deep past of our own solar system. Weighing in at 0.6 solar mass, HOPS-315 should someday grow to ...

The Oort cloud is a shell of icy objects that forms the very outskirts of our Solar System. Recently, a group of researchers discovered that the inner portion of the Oort cloud likely has spiral arms ...

Material around Chiron, a small icy world in the far reaches of the solar system, may be taking shape into a ring system of its own. The rare event is unfolding in real time, giving astronomers a ...

The outer reaches of our Solar System continue to reveal a complex dynamical environment where the interplay of gravitational forces shapes the orbits of a myriad of distant bodies. Research in this ...

There’s a bit of a paradox about our galaxy: it’s both jam-packed with stars and cavernously empty. The Milky Way is crowded in the sense that it holds hundreds of billions of stars, as well as ...