Based on new simulations, scientists believe that giant gas planets across the universe can often collide and merge into even bigger gas plants — behemoths called "super-Jupiters." In the cosmic ...

Astronomers have found strong evidence of a giant gas planet orbiting a star in a solar system close to our own sun. Four light-years away from Earth, the Alpha Centauri triple-star system has long ...

The birthplaces of planets are disks made out of gas and dust. Astronomers study these so-called protoplanetary disks to understand the processes of planet formation. Beautiful images of disks made ...

Astronomers just discovered a gas giant on its way to becoming a hot Jupiter — and it’s extremely weird. An exoplanet on a twisted, backwards orbit may offer clues about how hot Jupiters (giant gas ...

Rogue planets may be more common than we thought, and they may form alone in the void in the same way stars do, suggests a recent study. We think we know how the universe is structured: Moons orbit ...

Planets may begin forming much earlier than scientists once believed during the final stages of a star s birth, not afterward. This bold new model, backed by simulations from researchers at SwRI, ...

A "domino effect" may occur in star systems whereby newly formed planets close to a star help shepherd dust and gas to create more planets farther out in the system. Astronomers using a mountain ...

Astronomers have spent the past decade cataloguing thousands of planets beyond the solar system, many of them falling into a ...

A surprising analysis of the composition of gas giant exoplanets and their host stars shows that there isn’t a strong correlation between their compositions when it comes to elements heavier than ...

Twenty-four years ago, Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz discovered the first planet orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system—a milestone recognised by this year's Nobel prize ...