A planet's appearance is determined by its composition and atmospheric conditions. Inner planets are rocky due to the Sun's heat, while outer planets contain more gas. Atmospheric gases and surface ...

In 1990, Voyager 1 captured the most distant portrait of our planet ever taken, revealing that from beyond Pluto's orbit, Earth appears as nothing more than a "pale blue dot." In a new study, ...

In 1989, Voyager 2 became the first and only spacecraft to ever fly by Neptune, and images from that mission famously show a planet that's a deep azure color. But in reality, Neptune is far more of a ...

Out in the depths of the solar system lie the far-off ice giant planets. Uranus and Neptune are extremely far away at 20 and 30 times farther from the sun than the Earth is, according to NASA, and ...

Scientists have identified, at this point, more than 900 exoplanets -- planets that exist outside our solar system, orbiting other stars. We know those planets are out there; but we know that, in ...

I often do sidewalk astronomy with my telescope at Lake Ella or Cascades Park showing the universe to the public. Two frequent questions I get are “How do I know which ‘star’ is a planet” and “Is this ...

Fifty potential planets have had their existence confirmed by a new machine learning algorithm developed by University of Warwick scientists. For the first time, astronomers have used a process based ...