Our solar system’s origin story spans billions of years and involves clouds of gas, cosmic collisions, and planetary migrations that shaped the worlds we know today. While it may seem intuitive that ...

James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile James is a ...

Stargazers can now look up and see a planetary alignment in the night sky, or what some are calling a "planetary parade," throughout January. It's a dazzling cosmic event involving Venus, Mars, ...

For decades, astronomers assumed that small, rocky planets in precarious proximity to their stars were destined to be barren, ...

Fans of stargazing, the solar system, and early wakeup calls are in for a treat this month. Five planets are currently visible from Earth at the same time, in what’s known as a planet parade – or a ...

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) defines a planet as a celestial body orbiting the Sun, possessing sufficient mass for a nearly spherical shape, and having cleared its orbital neighborhood ...

As J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in The Fellowship of the Ring, “Not all those who wander are lost.” But in the case of planets, it’s possible that most of them are. Rogue planets—planets that are adrift in ...

There’s a major planetary lineup coming to the early-morning sky, with the Moon joining in several times in June. First, though, let’s look at why such lineups occur. If you were to turn our solar ...

On August 10, six planets—Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—will line up in an arc in the night sky. Four of these planets—Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn—can be seen with the ...

Six planets are hanging out in the sky this month in what’s known as a planetary parade. Catch the spectacle while you can because it’s the last one of the year. These linkups happen when several ...