Out in the Kuiper Belt, the massive doughnut of debris beyond Neptune, about one in 10 kilometer-scale objects have surprised scientists with their unexpected shape. Rather than resembling a ball, ...

Uranus is the strangest planet in the solar system when it comes to rotation, spinning almost completely on its side. Scientists believe something massive happened early in its history, possibly a ...

Every once in a while, the outer solar system reminds us that we've only discovered a negligible portion of it, and that the vast majority is still full of surprises. The latest example of this is a ...

HELSINKI — China has published coordinated papers outlining dual missions to the solar system’s edge, suggesting the long-studied project is nearing formal approval. A lead paper on the design and key ...

SANTA CRUZ — Xi Zhang, a professor of Earth and planetary science at UC Santa Cruz, has discovered that an exoplanet classed as a “super-Jupiter” has substantial differences from our solar system’s ...

Earth may owe some of its properties to a nearby star that blew up just as the solar system was forming. This pattern, which saw a supernova bubble envelop the sun and shower it with cosmic rays, may ...

The comet is the third object ever confirmed to have entered our cosmic neighborhood from elsewhere in the galaxy. Space telescopes and orbiters have been documenting the rare visit. A mysterious ...

On Oct. 29, at the same time 3I/ATLAS achieved perihelion, astrophotographer Dan Bartlett snapped a stunning shot of C/2025 K1 from June Lake in California. The image shows the comet with a distinct ...

Illustration comparing the planets of the Solar System and the Sun on the same scale. The planets are shown to scale relative to each other but their distances are not. From left to right the bodies ...