Today, astronomers have at least a dozen techniques to seek and detect planets orbiting other stars, and have turned up thousands. But 51 Peg will always be special since it was our first. Not only ...

While our Sun prefers to go solo, many other stars are parts of binary systems, with a pair of stars gravitationally bound to each other. In some cases, the stars are far enough apart that planets can ...

A free-floating planet has been seen devouring astonishing amounts of matter, hinting that stars and planets are more alike ...

Exoplanet hunters Christopher Watson and Annelies Mortier explain the long search for a 'twin Earth' capable of sustaining ...

The Sun makes Earth habitable, governs its climate and drives a variety of natural phenomena through its variable magnetism. Indeed, all planets in and outside the Solar System exist under the ...

Astronomers have captured the clearest picture yet of how massive stars are born, revealing a dramatic interplay between ...

Planets may begin forming much earlier than scientists once believed during the final stages of a star s birth, not afterward. This bold new model, backed by simulations from researchers at SwRI, ...

When we think of planets, we imagine steady worlds orbiting stars. But astronomers have just caught a free-floating planet in the act of a cosmic binge, devouring matter at the fastest rate ever seen ...

On October 6 1995, at a scientific meeting in Florence, Italy, two Swiss astronomers made an announcement that would transform our understanding of the universe beyond our solar system. Michel Mayor ...

A team of astronomers observed a confused exoplanet orbiting its two parent stars in a highly unusual way. As New Scientist reports, the planet, which was first discovered in 2004, is located in a ...

Luke found life on Tatooine to be boring, but he should be glad, because as we have seen, binary stars have the potential to play all kinds of havoc on their orbiting circumbinary planets. A ...

Did you see the bright star next to the moon? That was Venus, and part of a conjunction between the moon, Venus and the star Regulus. Will it return?