19 July 2023
Exoplanet PDS 70b, a gas giant seven times the mass of Jupiter, appears to share an orbit with a ball of dust around the mass of Earth's moon, which could be forming a new planet
11 April 2023
Some planets outside our solar system are thought to be tidally locked, with one side always facing their star, creating a world divided into hot and cold. Now, it seems this set-up may not be permanent after all, allowing the two sides to flip
7 April 2023
Philosophers have long debated whether Earth is the best of all worlds. More powerful telescopes are finally giving us a better chance of answering this question, writes astronomer Chris Impey
27 March 2023
Many researchers thought the worlds orbiting the star TRAPPIST-1 would have thick atmospheres, but new observations of one of them show that it doesn’t
19 January 2023
Many planets that have the right temperatures for liquid water on their surfaces used to be too hot or too cold, which may affect their ability to host life now
24 October 2022
Astronomers think that planets covered in water, with oceans hundreds of metres deep, could be relatively common in our galaxy. Now the race is on to find one
21 September 2022
Experiments on Earth mimicking the rays from a red dwarf star show that cyanobacteria, algae and moss can grow under these light conditions, backing the idea that some exoplanets could host life
7 September 2022
A pair of rocky planets orbiting the star LP 890-9, also known as SPECULOOS 2, seem likely to be in the habitable zone and one of them could be the second most habitable exoplanet discovered so far
10 June 2022
A small star called AU Microscopii seems to contain strange pockets of hydrogen that are more than 1500°C cooler than the rest of the star, and astronomers aren’t sure why
4 May 2022
Comb through observations from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite to help find new planets, says Layal Liverpool
