This illustration shows an exoplanet orbiting around two brown dwarfs –– objects bigger than gas-giant planets but too small to be proper stars. ESO/M. Kornmesser Astronomers have discovered a ...

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 ...

The shape of a planet's orbit is one of its fundamental properties, along with its size and distance from its host star. Earth has a nearly circular orbit, but some planets outside our solar system, ...

Planet hunters have grown used to strange worlds, but a handful of discoveries now point to something even more radical: giant planets that loop around their stars on orbits so skewed they almost defy ...

Stephen has degrees in science (Physics major) and arts (English Literature and the History and Philosophy of Science), as well as a Graduate Diploma in Science Communication. Stephen has degrees in ...

The classical picture of star and planet formation suggests that a star’s rotational axis and the orbital planes of its planets should be aligned. However, exoplanetary systems have considerable ...

Astronomers have found a planet that orbits at an angle of 90 degrees around a rare pair of peculiar stars. This is the first time we have strong evidence for one of these 'polar planets' orbiting a ...

An artist’s rendering of Barnard’s Star, as seen from one of the newly discovered exoplanets orbiting it International Gemini Observatory / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / P. Marenfeld under CC BY 4.0 For ...

The other planet orbits far from a faint star and may be as cold as Pluto. Still, learning that not all exoplanets are giant balls of gas was a landmark for the field. "These are the first plausibly ...

In theory, it could happen – one of the very first solutions to the three-body problem was this scenario. But it is very unlikely to be stable over time. You need the stars to have near equal mass and ...