Planets

Find out everything there is to know about planets and stay updated on the latest planet news with the comprehensive articles, interactive features and planet images at LiveScience.com. Learn more about space and the solar system as scientists continue to make amazing discoveries about planets.

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In a new study, researchers have modeled the interiors of the ice giants Uranus and Neptune.

Scientists probe the weird, alien water inside of Uranus and Neptune

By Chelsea Gohd

Researchers are investigating an alien version of water inside the strange, icy interiors of Uranus and Neptune.

The two giant planets in the TYC 8998-760-1 system are visible as two bright dots in the center (TYC 8998-760-1b) and bottom right (TYC 8998-760-1c) of the frame, noted by arrows. Other bright dots, which are background stars, are visible in the image as well. By taking different images at different times, the team was able to distinguish the planets from the background stars. The image was captured by blocking the light from the young, sunlike star (top-left of center) using a coronagraph, which allows for the fainter planets to be detected. The bright and dark seen on the star’s image are optical artifacts.

Multiplanet system around sunlike star photographed for 1st time ever

By Mike Wall

For the first time ever, astronomers have directly imaged multiple planets orbiting a sunlike star.

The solar system: Facts about our cosmic neighborhood

By Sarah Wild

Take a journey through our solar system.

This image shows the disk around the young AB Aurigae star, where the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) has spotted signs of planet birth. Close to the center of the image, in the inner region of the disk, we see the "twist" (in very bright yellow) that scientists believe marks the spot where a planet is forming. This twist lies at about the same distance from the AB Aurigae star as Neptune from the sun. The image was obtained with the VLT's SPHERE instrument in polarized light.

Baby exoplanet spotted growing around distant star (photo)

By Mike Wall

New imagery pinpoints the spot where a baby planet is forming around the young star AB Aurigae, which lies 520 light-years from Earth.

How to see the last supermoon of 2020

By Laura Geggel

Even if you're stuck indoors during the pandemic, you can still catch May's full moon, also known as the flower moon.

An illustration of two asteroids colliding

Mysterious 'disappearing' exoplanet was just a big cloud of asteroid trash, study suggests

By Brandon Specktor

The alleged exoplanet Fomalhaut b was discovered in 2004 and disappeared in 2014. Astronomers now say it was never a planet to begin with.

Uranus is uniquely tipped over among the planets in our solar system. Uranus' moons and rings are also orientated this way, suggesting they formed during a cataclysmic impact which tipped it over early in its history.

What smacked Uranus on its side? Something icy and as massive as Earth, scientists say.

By Mike Wall

Astronomers have worked out details of the giant impact that knocked Uranus so famously askew.

An artist's depiction of a distorted exoplanet.

Heavy-metal alien planet may be shaped like a football

By Charles Q. Choi

An exoplanet may be shaped like an American football due to the mighty gravitational forces it experiences close to its star, a new study finds.

An animation shows the strange magnetic field of Uranus. The yellow arrow points toward the sun and the dark blue arrow represents the planet's axis.

Old gas blob from Uranus found in vintage Voyager 2 data

By Meghan Bartels

Buried inside data Voyager 2 gathered at Uranus more than 30 years ago is the signature of a massive bubble that may have stolen a blob of the planet's gassy atmosphere.

This enhanced-color image of Jupiter's Great Red Spot was created by citizen scientist Jason Major using data from the JunoCam imager on NASA's Juno spacecraft.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot may be shrinking, but its thickness is steady

By Mike Wall

Jupiter's Great Red Spot isn't shrinking in every direction, a new study suggests.

1.5 billion-year-old Earth had water everywhere, but not one continent, study suggests

By Mindy Weisberger

Chemicals in ancient ocean rocks hint that 3.2 billion years ago, the surface of a baby Earth was continent-free and covered by a global ocean.

This artist's concept shows magnetic loops carrying gas and dust above disks of planet-forming material circling stars.

How big can a planet get?

By Natalie Hinkel

Why isn't there an endless variety of planets in the universe? An astrophysicist explains why planets only come in two flavors.

For the first time, scientists have spotted a giant planet orbiting a white dwarf star, shown in this artist's impression of the system.

Evidence of an Alien Planet Spotted Around a White Dwarf, a Cosmic First

By Mike Wall

For the first time ever, astronomers have spotted evidence of a planet circling a superdense stellar corpse known as a white dwarf, a new study reports.

Mercury's transit across the sun in 2016 took 7 and a half hours. This composite image of the journey was created with visible-light images from instruments on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Monday, Mercury Makes Rare Appearance with a Trek Across the Sun. Here's How to Watch It.

By Mindy Weisberger

The tiny planet Mercury will be visible from Earth as it moves across the sun, in an event known as a transit.

NASA Spacecraft Poised to Find Thousands of Alien Worlds

By Daniel Apai, Benjamin Rackham

Beyond the outer edge of the solar system, mysterious, unknown worlds await by the thousands. Astronomers can now finally find these exoplanets. But will we find another Earth?

Something mysterious is going on inside the ice giant Neptune.

There's Something Strange Going On Inside Neptune

By David Crookes, All About Space magazine

Neptune is warmer than Uranus and astronomers are trying to figure out why.

An artist's illustration shows two large planets smashing into each other with two suns shining in the distance.

In a Distant Galaxy, Colliding Exoplanets Are Upending What We Knew About Solar System Formation

By Brandon Specktor

Two Earth-like exoplanets appear to have smashed into each other in a distant solar system, and the cosmic carnage is only getting worse.

Nobel Prize in Physics Honors Scientists Who Transformed Our Ideas About the Cosmos

By Jeanna Bryner

The Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to three scientists for unraveling the structure and history of the universe and for changing our perspective of Earth’s place in it.

An illustration shows what Planet 9 might look like orbiting far from our sun. Now, at least two physicists think this picture is wrong and it's actually a black hole.

Is Our Solar System's Mysterious 'Planet 9' Really a Grapefruit-Size Black Hole?

By Rafi Letzter

It probably isn't a black hole, if it exists at all. But two physicists think we should check to see if it's a black hole anyway.

Oceans — and perhaps life — may once have thrived on Venus.

Did Venus, Earth's 'Twisted Sister' Hellscape Planet, Once Harbor Water — and Life?

By Mindy Weisberger

Venus, our solar system's broiling, radiation-bombarded, sulfuric-acid-raining, toxic hellscape of a planet, may once have been quite nice, actually.

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