A rare discovery beyond Neptune is forcing scientists to rethink early solar system dynamics and the forces that shaped ...

Protoplanetary disks are the birthplaces of planets, but few discoveries have stretched scientific expectations like IRAS ...

Leonardo Testi and team investigate the initial conditions for planet formation in this special astronomy focus ...

Billions of years ago, in the frozen edges of the solar system, a violent impact shaped one of space’s oddest pairs. Instead of a typical planet-moon setup, Pluto and Charon became a binary system.

What was originally thought to be a planet orbiting the Fomalhaut star was probably just the fallout of a wild collision.

A researcher has used advanced models that indicate that the formation of Pluto and Charon may parallel that of the Earth-Moon system. Both systems include a moon that is a large fraction of the size ...

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 ...

To better understand why the planets have variable compositions, we have to first understand the process of how stars form. While the composition of gas and dust in a precursor molecular cloud is ...