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.

Related Topics: Our Amazing Planet, The Great American Solar Eclipse 2017, Mars

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exoplanet proxima b art

NASA Spacecraft Poised to Find Thousands of Alien Worlds

By Daniel Apai, Benjamin Rackham published

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 published

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 published

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

big bang, expansion of the universe.

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

By Jeanna Bryner published

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 published

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 published

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

An older NASA illustration shows a disintigrating planet orbiting Tabby's star.

Rogue Ice Moon Could Be Spilling Its Guts All Over 'Alien Megastructure' Star

By Rafi Letzter published

Often, when we don't have an immediate explanation for something strange in space, some people blame aliens. But better explanations usually come along in time.

Jupiter

Giant Ammonia Storms Are Screwing with Jupiter's Beautiful Brown and White Belts of Color

By Rafi Letzter published

Powerful storms have erupted on Jupiter, and they're screwing up the planet's beautiful belts of white and color.

An illustration of a volcano-covered exomoon.

A Volcano-Covered Exomoon May Circle a Planet 550 Light-Years Away

By Yasemin Saplakoglu published

If confirmed, it may be the first "exomoon" discovered.

New Horizons' photo of Pluto showing the heart-shaped area now informally named Tombaugh Region.

Pluto Still Deserves to Be a Planet, NASA Chief Says

By Passant Rabie published

Pluto lost its "official" planet status over a decade ago, but fans of the solar system's underdog are still rooting for it. And NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine is one of them.

Apollo Samples Reveal the Moon Is Millions of Years Older Than We Thought

By Brandon Specktor published

Study: The moon is very, very, very old.

This artist’s impression shows how Mars may have looked about 4 billion years ago when almost half the planet’s northern hemisphere could have been covered by an ocean up to a mile (1.6 kilometers) deep in some places.

Martian Meteor Collision May Have Triggered a 1,000-Foot Tsunami

By Isobel Whitcomb published

A 90-mile-wide scar on the Martian landscape is potential "ground zero."

football-shaped planet WASP121-b

Scientists Find a Boiling, Toxic Wasteland of an Exoplanet, and It's Shaped Like a Football

By Rafi Letzter published

This first-of-its-kind discovery reveals a new category of ultrahot exoplanet, one so thoroughly cooked that your cast-iron skillet would bubble, turn to gas and boil out of the atmosphere.

Meet the Ploonets! Runaway Moons with Delusions of Planethood Get Astronomy's Cutest Name Ever

By Mindy Weisberger published

Moons orbiting distant worlds have a new nickname, and it's even cuter than "moonmoon."

The asteroid "2019 LF6" orbits close to the sun but on a different plane than our planets.

How This Huge, Superfast Asteroid Stayed Hidden in Near-Earth Orbit

By Yasemin Saplakoglu published

The year goes by quickly for this newfound asteroid.

'Oumuamua

Nature Could Have Created Oddball 'Oumuamua, Not Aliens

By Nola Taylor Redd published

The debate about 'Oumuamua's nature and origin continues.

Gorgeous 'Atlas of Space' Smashes the Textbook View of the Solar System

By Brandon Specktor published

The solar system is more than a row of nine circles. Try 18,000 of them.

An illustration shows the probe approaching Psyche.

NASA's Getting Ready to Explore the Corpse of an Ancient Planet in the Asteroid Belt

By Rafi Letzter published

A NASA mission to an ancient iron-nickel hunk has entered its final design phase, a key milestone on the way to reaching the distant destination in the mid-2020s.

To capture this image, researchers at the Very Large Telescope carefully filtered the light from the central star. PDS 70b is visible at the lower left and PDS 70 c is visible at the upper right.

Astronomers Spot Twin Planets Carving Holes in a Brand-New Solar System

By Rafi Letzter published

The two planets appear to have cleared a wide gap in their young star's protoplanetary disk. This is the first-ever observation of this behavior.

This image illustrates Jupiter's magnetic fields at a single moment in time.

Hidden Winds on Jupiter May Be Messing with Its Enormous Magnetic Field

By Rafi Letzter published

Jupiter's magnetic field has changed since the 1970s, and now physicists think they know why it's happening.