Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Planets

This test image from one of the four cameras on TESS captures a portion of the southern sky along the plane of our galaxy.

200,000 Stars Twinkle in First Test Image From NASA’s Planet-Hunting Satellite

Once its cameras are calibrated, TESS will capture 400 times as much sky as this test image

Venus shines brightly in the distance in this picture taken on the International Space Station.

New Research

Venus and Jupiter May Meddle With Earth’s Orbit and Climate

In 405,000-year cycles, the tug of nearby planets causes hotter summers, colder winters and drier droughts on our home planet

Gaia's all-sky view of our Milky Way Galaxy and neighboring galaxies, based on measurements of nearly 1.7 billion stars.

New Research

New Star Map Could Change Everything We Know About the Milky Way

The map includes 1.7 billion stars and is already revealing new details about star evolution and the formation of our galaxy

Trending Today

Five Things to Know About NASA’s New Planet-Hunting Satellite

TESS will scan the skies in search of the next crop of exoplanets

A piece of the Almahata Sitta in Sudan

New Research

Diamonds Trapped in Strange Meteorite Came From Solar System’s Earliest Planets

Impurities in the diamonds could only have formed within a planet the size of Mercury or Mars

What’s the Difference Between Moths and Butterflies and More Questions From Our Readers

You asked, we answered

Saturn's hazy moon Titan

New Research

Purple Haze: Alien Atmospheres Recreated In the Lab

By combining various gases with plasma, researchers are learning about the haze around distant planets

Ask Smithsonian

Who Was the First First Lady to Adopt a Cause and More Questions From Our Readers

You asked, we answered

A laser delivers a burst of ultraviolet light to compress water ice and create superionic ice

New Research

Scientists Make Weird Type of Ice Halfway Between Solid and Liquid

The strange form of ice could help explain the odd magnetic fields seen around Uranus and Neptune

Researchers estimate more than a trillion planets could exist in the elliptical galaxy at the center of this image.

New Research

Astronomers Spot Signs of Planets Outside the Milky Way

Researchers estimate that more than a trillion planets may lurk beyond our galaxy’s bounds

A replica of Foucault's famous experiment at the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e Tecnica in Milan, Italy

Ask Smithsonian

How Does Foucault’s Pendulum Prove the Earth Rotates?

This elegant scientific demonstration has been delighting everyday people for nearly 200 years

Artists illustration of the K-138 system

New Research

Citizen Scientists Discover an Unusual Five-Planet Solar System

Users looking through data on Exoplanet Explorers flagged four sub-Neptune planets orbiting a distant star called K2-138

The Orion Nebula

Cool Finds

Take a Breathtaking Trip Through the Orion Nebula in NASA’s New Video

Combining visible and infrared imagery, the new video takes viewers deep into the star nursery

Earth and Moon seen from 3 million miles away on October 2, 2017.

Asteroid-Sampling Spacecraft Captures Haunting View of Earth in Space

OSIRIS-REx tested its cameras by taking a gorgeous photo of its home planet

New Research

Shadows of Saturn’s Rings Mess With Its Upper Atmosphere

The Cassini probe’s final swoops through the rings found that they impact the planet’s ionosphere

New Research

Dinosaurs Were Around Before Saturn Had Rings

Data from the Cassini space probe suggests that the rings may be as young as 150 million years old

Kepler has been gazing out at the twinkle of stars since 2009, analyzing the light of hundreds of thousands of stars.

New Research

How AI Found the First Eight-Planet Solar System Beyond Our Own

Google’s neural network sifted through piles of NASA data to find a planet hiding in the spacestacks

What Lurks Below Jupiter’s Great Red Spot?

New results from the Juno spacecraft are helping to unlock the secrets of this centuries-old storm

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field

Cool Finds

Chilean Telescope Takes Deepest Look Into the Cosmos Yet

In the process, researchers discovered 72 new galaxies and details on 1,600 more

Geminids streak across the skies above the Alabama Hills. The approaching asteroid is thought to be the parent body of this annual meteor shower.

Three-Mile Wide Asteroid Will Zoom by Earth This December

But it will still be about 6.4 million miles away

Page 16 of 22