Rather than slowly condensing over millions of years, the first building blocks of Earth and other planets may have formed rapidly in a chaotic disk at the dawn of the solar system The triumph of NASA ...

Federal funding is about to run out for 19 active space missions studying Earth’s climate, exploring the Solar System, and probing mysteries of the Universe. This year’s budget expires at the end of ...

Astronomers have found a septet of superclouds lying just beyond the solar system. These giant strings of gas — five of which were previously unknown — sit nearly parallel to each other, and most of ...

While its star projector leaves a lot to be desired, the Science Can Solar System Planetary Projector is a fantastic educational tool for kids, with its solar system model, complete with talking ...

Simulations reveal that Jupiter’s rapid growth disrupted the early solar system, creating rings where new planetesimals formed much later than expected. These late-forming bodies match the ages and ...

Illustration comparing the planets of the Solar System and the Sun on the same scale. The planets are shown to scale relative to each other but their distances are not. From left to right the bodies ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. An award-winning reporter writing about stargazing and the night sky. 2023 KQ14, nicknamed “Ammonite,” is a trans-Neptunian object ...

More than 2 billion kilometers farther from the sun than Pluto, a frigid world named Makemake sports the most distant gas ever seen in our solar system, new observations reveal. “By surprise, we found ...

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 ...

Measurements of this interstellar comet’s molecular makeup show an excess of heavy water molecules that is dramatically ...

The workings of our solar system are roughly the same now as they have been for millions of years. Moons circle their planets, the planets circle the sun, the sun’s magnetic fields and sunspots wax ...