Moons come in many forms. To understand why there are no gas moons, in our solar system at least, it's best to first understand how gas giant planets form. There are two scenarios for gas-giant planet ...

It could be argued that one of the most perplexing aspects of our solar system is the fact that not every planet is a nice, solid rock like Earth. Some are literally, almost entirely, made of gas. You ...

Gas giants of the galaxy - Jupiter – the leading light of January’s sky – is big enough to contain 1,300 Earths, Nigel ...

Rogue planets may be more common than we thought, and they may form alone in the void in the same way stars do, suggests a recent study. We think we know how the universe is structured: Moons orbit ...

It’s hard to build a family these days — and that’s especially true when the neighbors’ stellar winds keep eroding all the gas out of your protoplanetary disk. A team of astronomers recently watched ...

(CN) — In a study published in the Astronomical Journal on Monday researchers explain how their detailed chemical analysis of gas giants in a solar system some 130 light years away sheds light on the ...

Thanks to the discovery of thousands of exoplanets to date, we know that planets bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune ...

At night, seven-year-old Miguel likes talking to his father Cesar Rubio about planets and stars. “I try to nurture that,” says Rubio, a machinist in Pomona, California, who makes parts for mining and ...

Since the first discovery of planets beyond the solar system in 1995, more than 6,000 exoplanets have been identified. Many of these planets have properties that differ significantly from the eight ...

Planets may begin forming much earlier than scientists once believed during the final stages of a star s birth, not afterward. This bold new model, backed by simulations from researchers at SwRI, ...

Dimitris Stamatellos receives funding from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). A new planet starts its life in a rotating circle of gas and dust, a cradle known as a protostellar ...

It’s often said—we said it again ourselves just last week, in fact—that our own Solar System isn’t as typical as scientists once imagined. We’ve got four small, close-in, rocky planets (Mercury ...