ESA’s CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite (CHEOPS) has revealed a four-planet system whose outermost world is a small and rocky planet -- not a gas giant.

"This strange disorder makes it a unique inside-out system," study lead author Thomas Wilson, physics professor from the University of Warwick, said in a statement. "Rocky planets don't usually form ...

Their observations of a faint, cool M-dwarf star called LHS 1903 revealed a system with a rocky world at its outer edge. LHS ...

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 ...

What if humanity could no longer live on Earth? Perhaps a catastrophic event forced us to find a new home among the stars.

A newly identified planet candidate, HD 137010 b, looks strikingly Earth-like in size and orbit — but it may be colder than Mars due to its dimmer star. If it has a thick enough atmosphere, though, ...

Launched in 2019, the ESA mission will measure the size and density of hundreds of known exoplanets orbiting bright stars.

Key takeawaysIf a gas giant planet is big enough to ignite deuterium fusion, it becomes a brown dwarf instead of a planet.

Gas giants are enormous planets made primarily of hydrogen and helium. They may contain dense central cores, but unlike Earth, they do not have solid ...

A distant star system with four super-sized gas giants has revealed a surprise. Thanks to JWST’s powerful vision, astronomers detected sulfur in their atmospheres — a chemical clue that they formed ...

Worlds like Tatooine—the iconic twin-sun planet from Star Wars—are no longer confined to science fiction; they have entered ...

If a gas giant planet is big enough to ignite deuterium fusion, it becomes a brown dwarf instead of a planet. But this definition is incomplete and does not tell us how gas giants form or what ...