Alien Planets

The James Webb Space Telescope could reveal hints about exoplanet surfaces by studying the planets' atmospheric temperatures and moisture levels.

The James Webb Space Telescope is already confounding expectations, showing that we still have much to learn about the atmospheres of "hot Jupiters."

Gaia scientists are agog after finding out that the star-spotting spacecraft can double as a planet-hunter.

The buzz among professional astronomers has been electric since members of the Webb team shared tantalizing test images. And the real images are even better than anyone could have hoped for.

NASA's retired Spitzer Space Telescope spotted a sandstorm special.

The first exoplanets ever discovered orbit a pulsar, and that's even stranger than scientists thought.

A citizen scientist used old telescope data to find a trove of binary star systems that include what are sometimes dubbed "failed stars."

Two sounding rockets are launching with experiments to assess the habitability of Alpha Centauri while also teaching us about how normal the sun is.

The messy system of Beta Pictoris will come under scrutiny to learn how similar it is to our solar system.

The Gaia spacecraft is helping to fill the gaps in our understanding of "hot Jupiters," mysterious, massive planets that orbit very close to their stars.

Alien life in the deep global ocean of a water world could receive its nutrients through a shell of high-pressure ice around the planet's core.

A planetary system with two Earthlike planets has been discovered only 33 light-years away from us.

Because Earth is the only planet known to host life as we know it, researchers have usually focused on planetary systems similar to our own when searching for extraterrestrial life.

If aliens exist, they do exist, they might be hanging out on Dyson spheres circling the husks of sunlike stars called white dwarfs.

A proposed Chinese mission would look for nearby habitable alien worlds by launching a spacecraft to make ultraprecise measurements of how orbiting planets make a star wobble.

Investigating these co-orbiting worlds in our own solar system may help us predict prevalence in extrasolar systems.

What if we thought of our ancestors as a form of alien life?

Harness renewable energy to explore the cosmos or risk planetary doom, new physics study argues.