When a distant planet appears as a point of light in a telescope, it's hard to imagine what things are like at the surface. Does rain fall? Is the atmosphere thick, or dissipating into space? How ...

While most planets that we are familiar with stick relatively close to their host star in a predictable orbit, some planets seem to have been knocked out of their orbits, floating through space free ...

The galaxy is expected to be home to billions of free-floating, or "rogue", planets that have no stellar companion. These worlds have been kicked out of the system where they formed, and they travel ...

A highly stylized rendition of our solar system NASA/JPL If someone asked which planet was closest to Earth, you’d be pretty certain — it’s Venus. We measure distances in the solar system in terms of ...

Daniel Apai receives funding from NASA, Heising-Simons Foundation, Department of Defense, Space Telescope Science Institute, and the University of Arizona, and leads the NASA-funded Alien Earths ...

The search for life beyond Earth is a holy grail quest for many experts, but finding where to look is a core issue. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.