A new study presents a compelling new model for the formation of super-Earths and mini-Neptunes -- planets that are 1 to 4 times the size of Earth and among the most common in our galaxy. Using ...

Astronomers have identified a super-Earth orbiting a Sun-like star just 20 light-years away, making it one of the closest and ...

Studying the orbits of thousands of exoplanets shows that large planets tend to have elliptical orbits, while smaller planets tend to have more circular orbits. This split coincides with several other ...

When we have five or more planets filing into a small sky area, an alignment is upgraded to parade status. Parade is not an ...

Planet demographics reveal a puzzling lack of worlds in a certain size range throughout the galaxy F or centuries our solar ...

In 2011, a project that surveyed the Milky Way galaxy for exoplanets — which are planets beyond our solar system — spotted an intriguing signal: They found two objects traveling together through the ...

Online chatter and a frenzy of media coverage has tended to make a big deal of allegedly rare "planetary alignments" and "planet parades" gracing our night skies. The hoopla has culminated this ...

In the eyes of the general public, it typically means that we can see multiple planets at once. Interestingly, they'll always appear along the same arc in the night sky. That path is called the ...

"It is a really rare thing to have all seven of the planets there on the same kind of side of the sky," said local astronomer ...

Only five planets, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus and Mercury, will be visible to the naked eye. They will look like large, twinkling stars. Jupiter, Saturn and Venus will appear as bright-white ...

Large planets need metal-rich stars in order to form; small planets do not. Small planets have low eccentricities, and large planets have large eccentricities,” Gilbert explained.