planets

Scientists have a new explanation for the mystery of why some alien planets the size of Jupiter or larger travel in the opposite direction of their parent star's spin. Of the more than 500 alien planets that have so far been discovered, many have turned out to be oddballs. Scientists have found...

If you get up any morning for the next few weeks, you’ll be treated to the sight of all the planets except Saturn arrayed along the ecliptic, the path of the sun through the sky. For the last two months, almost all the planets have been hiding behind the sun, but this week they all emerge and...

While planets like Mercury and Mars tend to move quickly around the zodiac, it's the movement of the outer lying planets that is a rarer occurrence, because they're farther away from Earth and the Sun. When Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune make their transits this year, their impact is heavy; these...

Astronomer Stands By Discovery of Alien Planet Gliese 581g Amid Doubts Despite the doubts raised recently over the existence of the potentially habitable alien world Gliese 581g, the planet's co-discoverer is standing behind his find. Steven Vogt, leader of the team that detected Gliese 581g...

For the first time, astronomers have been able to directly follow the motion of an exoplanet as it moves from one side of its host star to the other. The planet has the smallest orbit so far of all directly imaged exoplanets, lying almost as close to its parent star as Saturn is to the Sun...

Scientists discover a nearly Earth-sized planet -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HATFIELD, England – In the search for Earth-like planets, astronomers zeroed in Tuesday on two places that look awfully familiar to home. One is close to the right...