How do you picture the solar system? Most of us imagine the eight planets as colorful balls of varying sizes moving in orbits that comfortably fit within the confines of our computer screens.

Simulation of the star passing close to the Solar System. Credit: Forschungszentrum Jülich Billions of years ago, a star may have passed incredibly close to our Solar System, triggering a series of ...

Long ago, a planetary object eight times the mass of Jupiter may have once visited the solar system and altered the orbits of the four outer planets-Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

In the dark, icy outskirts of our solar system—far beyond Neptune's orbit—astronomers have discovered a cosmic oddball that ...

The massive object flew through the solar system at a velocity of about 6km per second, coming within 20 astronomical units of the sun and shaping the orbits of the gas giant planets into what we ...

Our solar system's planets aren't weird after all. Exoplanets have tilted orbits, too Elizabeth Howell Thu, November 30, 2023 at 2:00 PM UTC 3 min read ...

Our solar system orbits the galactic centre at a distance of some 26,000 light years, but to find stars and planets created under similar conditions to our own, astronomers would first need to ...