18 June 2023
A distant star called FU Orionis has been shining extraordinarily bright for the last 85 years, and it may be because it is incinerating a young, nearby planet that could be fully consumed in another 300 years
8 May 2023
Astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to spot strange asteroid belts around the nearby star Fomalhaut, along with evidence for at least three planets
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
28 September 2021
Astronomers have spotted hints of a planet that orbits a distant system of three stars – if confirmed, it will be the first time such a world has been found
13 September 2021
Stars that have eaten their planets aren't promising places to look for alien life, and now there is a technique that can help quickly identify such stars from their chemistry
7 May 2021
A cosmic census of the currently known objects in the vicinity of our sun has revealed that there are 540 stars and planets in the immediate neighbourhood
22 April 2021
Several sun-like stars have been observed ejecting huge bursts of particles into space, which might help us decide whether their orbiting planets are potentially habitable or not
14 January 2021
Tau Ceti is a star just 12 light years away – and it could host a planet called PXP-4 that sits as close to the star as Earth does to our sun with its year about as long as ours
2 July 2019
The light from a pair of stars about 360 light years away dimmed and brightened again 28 times in three months and astronomers have no explanation
15 April 2019
Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the solar system, and it may be home to a frigid planet six times the size of Earth in addition to the possibly habitable Proxima b
