Mercury doesn't give up its secrets easily. The smallest planet in our solar system is also one of the most extreme—a sun-scorched, metal-rich world with a puzzling magnetic field and lavas unlike ...

The universe has a knack for throwing curveballs at astronomers. Just when scientists think they’ve got cosmic mechanics figured out, space reveals something so bizarre it rewrites the rulebook. These ...

Venus is often called Earth's evil twin due to its size, mass, material composition, and density. It even feels like Venus should've become a second Earth. However, it ended up being one of the ...

A newly studied solar system breaks the usual planet pattern, raising fresh questions about how rocky and gas planets form.

Hot Jupiters rank among the strangest planets astronomers have ever found. They are gas giants as massive as Jupiter, yet they race around their stars in just a few days. Since the first such world ...

Hubble observations reveal a giant, turbulent planet-forming disk that may reshape theories of how planetary systems develop.

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered an astonishing exoplanet that’s stretching our understanding of what’s possible for these distant worlds. And when we say say “stretch, ...

I find the outer reaches of our solar system fascinating. It’s a place that we know very little about considering how relatively close it is – even its size is up for debate. It’s littered with icy ...