With sapphire waterfalls, lava rain and orbits around dead stars, these distant worlds push the limits of what’s possible.

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. There are currently more than 5,800 known planets beyond the solar system. Artist Martin Vargic ...

A four-planet system reveals remarkable insights about how planets form and how they change during their lifetime.

Huge, red "super-Jupiter" exoplanet orbits its star. Since astronomers first looked beyond the solar system three decades ago to discover extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, we've known that planets in ...

Planets are about as scarce as they can be in our summer evening sky. Earth is the only one that’s visible as darkness falls. Just look down instead of up. All of the major planets that are visible to ...

A star about 600 light-years away is giving astronomers a front-row view to the environments in which rocky planets like Earth form around the most abundant stars in the universe. Called ISO-ChaI 147, ...

Across the Milky Way and beyond, planetary systems appear to fall into a few recurring blueprints, and recent exoplanet ...

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) defines a planet as a celestial body orbiting the Sun, possessing sufficient mass for a nearly spherical shape, and having cleared its orbital neighborhood ...

Monisha Ravisetti was a science writer at CNET. She covered climate change, space rockets, mathematical puzzles, dinosaur bones, black holes, supernovas, and sometimes, the drama of philosophical ...

NASA announced the selection of industry proposals to advance technologies for the agency’s Habitable Worlds Observatory concept.