When astronomers search for planets that could host liquid water on their surface, they start by looking at a star's habitable zone. Water is a key ingredient for life, and on a planet too close to ...

In the remote outer reaches of planetary systems, far beyond the orbit of known planets, enormous and mysterious worlds silently loop around their stars. Some drift as far as 10,000 times the distance ...

This is a montage of Hubble Space Telescope views of our solar system's four giant outer planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, each shown in enhanced color. The images were taken over nearly ...

Scientists have used data from a long-retired NASA Dawn spacecraft to solve the mystery surrounding the origins of the strange dwarf planet Ceres. Ceres currently resides in the main asteroid belt ...

Astronomers have spotted an intriguing cluster of objects in the Kuiper belt, an enormous, donut-shaped region of icy objects ...

Earth has a newly-discovered neighbor in the solar system. But the heavenly body – possibly a dwarf planet à la Pluto – isn't a frequent visitor. Located beyond Neptune, its extreme orbit ...

A new study reveals how shifting ice shells on icy moons can cause dramatic pressure changes, sometimes enough to boil their hidden oceans. The outer planets of our Solar System are accompanied by ...