Exoplanets

According to new simulations, many, even most, planets get ejected from their star early in their history

Evidence of alien worlds goes back farther than you think

Four small, newly discovered worlds are less than six light-years away from Earth, and their discovery reinforces a cautionary tale from planet hunting’s prehistory

It’s neither fast nor food, but a spectacular object called HH 30 looks appetizing for astronomers in a new image from the James Webb Space Telescope

A newly confirmed exoplanet around a nearby sunlike star might be astronomers’ best chance yet to look for life beyond the solar system—but it’s still no place like home

The nearby star Vega, featured in the 1997 movie Contact, appears to have a smooth disk devoid of giant planets for reasons we can’t explain

This blazingly fast star is shooting through the Milky Way with a planet in tow

The Jupiter-like world Epsilon Indi Ab is one of the coldest—and closest—exoplanets that astronomers have ever seen

Alien worlds that glow like lightbulbs or harbor molten-rock rain are revealing planets’ profound cosmic diversity—and pointing the way toward finding those that truly resemble our own familiar Earth

The atmosphere of exoplanet WASP-76b may rain iron and form a strange, rainbow-like phenomenon called a “glory” never yet seen outside the solar system

New analyses cast doubt on claims that a meteor witnessed over the South Pacific in 2014 came from another star system and raise questions about a high-profile expedition to recover the fireball’s fragments from the seafloor

Snapshots of a plethora of planet-forming disks offer more than just eye candy—they also reveal some fundamental aspects of how worlds are born