On a frigid orbit beyond Neptune, some of the solar system’s smallest worlds project a strange silhouette. Two rounded lobes, pressed together with a narrow “neck,” like a snowman that never melted.

An international team of astronomers has discovered a distant planetary system that challenges long-standing theories of how ...

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, ...

In a conventional system like our own, rocky planets such as Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars orbit closest to the host star. Farther out, gas giants ...

WASHINGTON, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Astronomers have observed a planetary system that challenges current planet formation theories, with a rocky planet that formed beyond the orbits of its gaseous ...

Since the 1990s, astronomers have found a handful of other dwarf planets in the belt, such as Eris and Sedna, along with ...

A planetary system 116 light-years from Earth has a peculiar pattern. It could flip the script on how planets form, scientists say.

The planets around a nearby star seem to be in the wrong order, hinting that they formed through a different mechanism than the familiar one by which most systems grow ...

The aircraft offers exceptional long-range capabilities.

As next-generation telescopes map this outer frontier, astronomers are bracing for discoveries that could reveal hidden planets, strange structures, and clues to the solar system’s chaotic youth.