Lately we've been reporting about a series of studies on the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), NASA's flagship telescope ...

Planets travel alone in space, without a parent star. These wandering worlds, far from being rare, might even be extremely common, offering a new and unprecedented view of our galaxy. To detect these ...

Astronomers have detected a massive, lonely world drifting through the darkness without a star to call home. This Saturn-sized rogue planet was discovered by an international team of scientists using ...

When we imagine a planet, we think of one like ours, orbiting a star. But some have a far lonelier existence, drifting through interstellar space without a sun to call their own. Known as “rogue” or ...

ON LAND, HUMANS’ desire to protect the richness of natural life is as old as Eden; in its modern guise, terrestrial conservation dates back to the founding in 1872 of America’s Yellowstone Park. In ...

TRAPPIST-1e, an Earth-sized world in the system’s habitable zone, is drawing scientific attention as researchers hunt for signs of an atmosphere—and potentially life-supporting conditions. Early James ...

Astronomers studying extreme planetary systems have identified worlds so massive that they rival the smallest stars in size. These giant planets blur the line between planetary and stellar ...

A new study has proposed the existence of Planet Y, an alternative Planet Nine candidate that is smaller and closer to Earth than the hypothetical Planet X, which astronomers have been hunting for ...

Excellent question. Astronomers are often faced with seeking information about objects they cannot visit to examine. Instead, they use mathematical laws and observation to determine the ...

An exoplanet orbiting close to its host star triggers violent flares that are destroying its atmosphere, according to new research from the European Space Agency's Cheops mission. Credit: Janine ...