Mercury has long baffled astronomers because it defies much of what we know about planet formation. A new space mission ...

Short-lived radioisotopes such as aluminum-26 influenced early solar system heat, water retention and the formation of Earth-like rocky planets, according to meteorite analyses and models.

Researchers have confirmed the mass of a free-floating planet thanks to a lucky convergence of ground- and space-based ...

Astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian have captured what may be the biggest planet-forming disk ...

Hubble reveals the largest planet-forming disk ever seen, Dracula's Chivito, showing a chaotic and uneven environment around ...

Roughly 1,000 light-years away from Earth, a gigantic disk of gas and dust is swirling around a young star and giving rise to ...

Gaia data reveals signs of planets forming around young stars by measuring stellar motion, identifying planetary, brown dwarf, and stellar companions in early star systems ...

Every planet in the solar system leans, some gently, some dramatically, and that tilt quietly shapes everything from our ...

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

Most of the planets we’ve identified are in orbit around stars and formed from the disks of gas and dust that surrounded the ...

Two rare cosmic collisions around the young star Fomalhaut were caught by space telescopes, offering new clues about how planets form.

In an unprecedented celestial event, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) captured the dramatic aftermath of colliding space rocks within a nearby planetary system. When astronomers initially spotted a ...