Astronomers have used the James Webb Space Telescope to capture the most detailed look yet at the atmosphere of Kepler-51d, a planet so lightweight it has been compared to cotton candy. The new data ...

Kepler was one of the most successful exoplanet-hunting missions so far. It discovered 2,600 confirmed exoplanets—almost half of the total—in its almost 10 years of operation. However, most data ...

Exoplanets—planets that orbit stars beyond our solar system—have transformed our understanding of the universe. Since the first confirmed discovery in the 1990s, more than 5,000 have been identified, ...

Volunteers spotted something in old data, and the dip in starlight may belong to an Earth-sized world that takes roughly a ...

Although astronomers have directly imaged a few dozen gas giants on the scale of Jupiter, Earth-sized planets are too small and dim to be directly imaged. That's not to say there's a shortage of Earth ...

The astronomical confusion started at 2 a.m ET on June 26, 2023. Scientists using the powerful James Webb Space Telescope sought to observe a planet beyond our solar system (an exoplanet) called ...

The other subject is Kepler-62, a "main sequence" star at a similar phase in its evolution as our sun. Using a 3D global climate computer model normally employed to study Earth's environment, the ...

Astronomers have detected over 5,800 confirmed exoplanets. One extreme class is ultra-hot Jupiters, of particular interest because they can provide a unique window into planetary atmospheric dynamics.

An alien radio signal from K2-155 d? Are there any alien civilizations out there? For several decades, scientists have been searching for evidence that they exist. That effort is collectively known as ...

Have astronomers found a colder version of Earth? An international team of researchers said on January 27, 2026, that they have discovered a new “exo-Earth” candidate 146 light-years away. The ...

Click here for an explanation of each section [Celestial bodies that serve as conversation starters] NoneThere are no ...