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, ...

A recent astronomical discovery has shaken long-held beliefs about how planets form. For decades, scientists thought that stars much smaller than our Sun couldn't form giant planets. That theory just ...

Every gas giant astronomers have ever studied shares a basic recipe: a thick envelope of hydrogen and helium, with heavier ...

Scientists have discovered a giant planet orbiting a tiny red dwarf star, something they believed wasn t even possible. The planet, TOI-6894b, is about the size of Saturn but orbits a star just a ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. An award-winning reporter writing about stargazing and the night sky. This artist’s concept shows what the gas giant orbiting ...

Astronomers have identified a vast, cotton-candy–light “super‑puff” world that loops around its star in a wildly misaligned orbit, defying the tidy rules that usually govern planetary systems. Instead ...

Astronomers have confirmed a giant planet orbiting a tightly bound pair of young stars, marking a first in direct exoplanet imaging. The planet, known as HD 143811 AB b, is the closest-in world ever ...

In a blow to anyone dreaming that complex life may exist elsewhere in the universe, a new study suggests we're unlikely to find it around many of the most common stars in the galaxy. Earth-like ...

Astronomers have found the strongest evidence yet of a planet orbiting a binary-star system at close to a right angle 1. The system is also unusual in that both stars are brown dwarfs — objects larger ...