Some of the most promising places to look for extraterrestrials have remained, so far, mostly hidden from astronomers. Now a game-changing instrument called NIRPS (Near-Infrared Planet Searcher) is ...

Planets are born, and they can also "die." So what's the lifespan of a typical planet?

A planet circling at a sharp 90-degree angle to the orbits of its two host stars has now been confirmed. This discovery challenges long-standing ideas about how planets form and orbit in the cosmos.

A planetary system 116 light-years from Earth has a peculiar pattern. It could flip the script on how planets form, scientists say.

This is a brilliant question because the notion of an orbit is counterintuitive. We know that massive objects (really, any objects with mass) gravitationally attract other massive objects; Newton's ...

General relativity helps explain the lack of planets around tight binary stars by driving orbital resonances that eject or destroy close-in worlds. This process naturally creates a “desert” of ...

Right angle Illustration of 2M1510 showing the orbits of the two brown dwarfs (in blue) and that of the planet (in orange). (Courtesy: ESO/L Calçada) The first strong evidence for an exoplanet with an ...

In the cold, dark outskirts of planetary systems far beyond the reach of the known planets, mysterious gas giants and planetary masses silently orbit their stars — sometimes thousands of astronomical ...

Since the 1990s, scientists have discovered approximately 6,100 planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets.