Spiral Galaxy from Kirkland et al. CREDIT Chris Kirkland and colleagues. A new study of zircon crystals from two of Earth’s oldest continents indicates that the formation of Earth’s continental crust ...

A 24-year-old observatory assistant from the Midwest discovered Pluto. Clyde Tombaugh, born in 1906 in Streator, Illinois, ...

New studies offer a clearer picture of how the outer solar system formed and evolved based on analyses of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) and centaurs. The findings reveal the distribution of ices in ...

Our solar system is a smashing success. A new study suggests that from its earliest period — even before the last of its nebular gas had been consumed — Earth’s solar system and its planets looked ...

Unpopular opinion time, Pluto being reclassified as a dwarf planet was a great thing for our understanding of the solar ...

When 'Oumuamua traversed our solar system in 2017 it was the first confirmed Interstellar Object (ISO) to do so. Then in 2019, Comet 2l/Borisov did the same thing. These are the only two confirmed ...

An object that was born around another star, drifted through interstellar space for longer than the Sun has existed, and briefly passed through the inner solar system is now on its way back out into ...

Astronomers have identified a small, frozen world orbiting far beyond Neptune whose strange path complicates one of the most ...

Dark matter refers to material that does not absorb, reflect, or emit any electromagnetic radiation. Astronomers have ascertained the existence of dark matter through the gravitational influence it ...

Estimating ages of specific events is one of the most difficult problems in astrophysics. While we have a precise (and probably accurate) age for the solar system, we do not have precise ages for each ...

Oh, we humans do love a cleanly defined boundary, don’t we? They make things easier, after all. If we’re trying to categorize something, knowing what labeled bin to put it in is handy. If we’re ...

Since the first discovery of a planet orbiting another star in 1992, some 280 alien solar systems have been identified. Most look quite unlike ours, and for good reason. Planets are mainly spied by ...