Tagged: solar system

A citizen scientist group has created the most complete map to date of brown dwarfs neighboring our solar system. Celestial bodies known as brown dwarfs, which are essentially failed stars, are too big to be considered planets and too small to be considered stars. Members...

  NASA has found a new planet outside our solar system which is eerily similar to Earth in key aspects. Scientists say the temperature on the surface of the planet is about a comfy 22C (72F). Its star could almost be a twin of our...

Juno and InSight have ‘increased our understanding of our solar system,’ NASA said Citing discoveries that have “produced exceptional science,” NASA has decided to add several years to two of its planetary science missions: the Jupiter Juno mission and the Mars InSight lander. After a...

A group of friends has created a stunning 7-mile scale model of the solar system on a dry lakebed in Nevada. “The only way to see a scale model of the solar system was to build one,” explained science film-maker, noting the vast distances between...

If cold weather is what he’s after, there are plenty of frigid territories in the solar system where Santa could set up shop beyond the North Pole. Here we tour of some of the most shiver-inducing spots in the solar system, where you might be...

The Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile captured this picture of disks that formed around a young star about 450 light years away from our planet. Now, scientists are proposing that similar disks could have formed around our sun in the early solar system,...

Astronomers have discovered an alien solar system whose planets are arranged much like those in our own solar system, a find that suggests most planetary systems start out looking the same, scientists say. Researchers studying the star system Kepler-30, which is 10,000 light-years from Earth,...

Lurking near the orbit of Jupiter is an asteroid like no other — it’s an alien from another star system. Unlike the famous asteroid `Oumuamua that zoomed past our sun and then back out into interstellar space last year, this visitor may have arrived at...

Some of the most interesting objects in our solar system are also the smallest or largest. In addition to the sun, planets, and moons, our solar system has a variety of small objects such as asteroids, comets, stars, meteors, and moons. These have affected what...

Comet Thatcher hasn’t visited our neck of the solar system since the American Civil War. And scientists predict that the giant hunk of ice and dust won’t come back here until the year 2276. But every April, some of its debris puts on a nighttime...