The size of the solar system is defined by the volume of space over which the sun's influence exceeds those of other nearby stars in the Milky Way galaxy. This influence derives from two fundamental ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the ...

Are planets in the solar system that are closer to the Sun older than the ones further away? – Gavriel, age 10, Paducah, Kentucky A cloud of collapsing gas created our Sun, the first thing to form in ...

NASA’s newly launched IMAP mission is set to tell us more about the boundary between our Solar System and interstellar space ...

The Sun is orbited by eight planets, at least five dwarf planets, tens of thousands of asteroids, and around three trillion comets and icy bodies. Although not all objects of the solar system are as ...

An object eight times the mass of Jupiter may have swooped around the sun, coming superclose to Mars' present-day orbit before shoving four of the solar system's planets onto a different course. When ...

Studying the orbits of thousands of exoplanets shows that large planets tend to have elliptical orbits, while smaller planets tend to have more circular orbits. This split coincides with several other ...

Astronomers poring over four years of data from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft have discovered a star that’s 11.2 billion years old and has at least five Earth-size planets. “We thus show that Earth-size ...