Alien Planets

Scientists have caught their best-ever look at a comet belching out ice, dust and gas — and the observations came courtesy of a mission designed to hunt for alien worlds.

For the first time ever, astronomers have spotted evidence of a planet circling a superdense stellar corpse known as a white dwarf, a new study reports.

A giant planet wildly careening around a star may not prevent an Earth-size planet from staying in a stable orbit friendly to life as we know it, a new study finds.

NASA's planet-hunting spacecraft created a spectacular panorama of the southern sky that shows off our home galaxy, the Milky Way.

Hit-and-run collisions and those that leave debris can affect a planet's orbit and growth.

Scientists have discovered a "survivalist" planet that shouldn't exist orbiting a pulsating star.

This Halloween season, NASA wants to open your eyes to the glorious spookiness all around us in the Milky Way galaxy.

Our sun may someday be able to shed light on whether life is hiding on a distant planet, assuming humans can execute a delicate maneuver in space.

Astronomers love a hot mess — at least when it can tell them more about how solar systems work.

How long until we find evidence of life beyond Earth? If a panel of experts is on track with their estimates, it may be sooner than you think.

Scientists with the TESS mission will work with the Breakthrough Listen project.

Thousands of planets may form and orbit around the kind of supermassive black holes found in the cores of most, if not all, galaxies, a new study finds.

Giant alien worlds with searing, close orbits to their host stars can inflate like balloons. Now astronomers have discovered one so puffy that it is one of the least dense planets ever discovered.

By analyzing the disintegrated remains of distant worlds consumed by their stars, a new study found that at least some rocky exoplanets may have interiors similar to those of Earth and Mars.

The 1995 discovery showed that the sun isn't the only star to host a family of planets — something we had long figured but never demonstrated — and also that the universe is really, really weird.

Right now, it's a solar system known only by the designation HD 17156. Before 2019 ends, it will bear an entirely different second moniker — perhaps one suggested by you.

The smaller a planet, the more difficult it is to spot — which is frustrating for scientists hoping to find Earth-like worlds.

NGTS-10b is a very weird world.

The Nobel Prize in physics this year has gone to two very different research threads — and danced around some big societal issues, even as they celebrate distinguished work.