Our Milky Way galaxy is teeming with a wild variety of planets. In addition to our solar system's eight near-and-dear planets, there are more than 800 so-called exoplanets known to circle stars beyond our sun.
Researchers say they've conducted the first reconnaissance of a distant planetary system, collecting the spectra of four red exoplanets which orbit a star 128 light years away from Earth.
There's probably an Earth-sized planet with a comfortable temperature as little as 13 light years away, data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope implies.
Astronomers using the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Telescope have spotted a star that appears to be making new planets, despite being well past the age at which it would be expected to do so.
One of the closest stars to our own, Tau Ceti, appears to have five planets, including one that's in the so-called habitable zone and could be suitable for life.
Astronomers have, for the first time, spotted planets orbiting sun-like stars in a crowded cluster - the best evidence yet that planets can form in dense stellar environments.
The center of the galaxy is not only a crowded place, it's blasted by shock waves, bathed in radiation and warped by owerful gravitational forces from the supermassive black hole at the region's heart.
NASA's Kepler mission has for the first time discovered multiple planets orbiting a pair of stars, showing it's possible for more than one planet to be formed and survive in such a chaotic environment.
Astronomers have discovered two neighboring planets - one a bigger version of Earth - orbiting closer to each other than any planets discovered before.
There could be many more small planets than previously thought, thanks to the discovery that they don't need to form around stars rich in heavy elements.
It sounds like the plot to a science fiction story, but new scientific research hypothesizes that "advanced dinosaurs" may have evolved on other planets in the universe.
Astronomers have long searched for habitable exoplanets orbiting red dwarf stars (M dwarfs), which are considered the most common type of star in the Milky Way galaxy.
