Solar System

There Might Really Be a Planet X, Lurking Beyond Pluto

The far reaches of our own solar system could contain worlds undiscovered.

Jupiter with moons Io and Europa as seen by the Voyager I probe

Jupiter Made Our Solar System Weird

The gas giant just had to throw its mass around

An artist's rendition of Pluto's surface.

Make Your Mark on Pluto by Helping Name Its Features

The New Horizons team is asking the public for help labeling the maps of Pluto and one of its moons

A mosaic of Enceladus collected by Cassini showing deep fissures or sulci

A Hint That a Saturnian Moon Could Have Hydrothermal Vents—And Support Life

Grains of silica from Saturn’s magnetosphere likely came from Enceladus and may mean the moon has hydrothermal vents

An artist’s interpretation of an object slamming into the early Earth

Metal Rain Could Explain Why the Earth Made of Different Stuff Than the Moon

A new study shows that iron-rich asteroids could have vaporized when they hit the early Earth

Two spots shine like beacons from the dwarf planet Ceres

The Dawn Spacecraft Is About to Reach Its Next Destination—the Dwarf Planet Ceres

We might just learn what the mysterious bright spots on the dwarf planet are—and much more

A happy solar system stays in orbit around the Sun

If the Earth’s Orbit Stopped We Would Have About A Month To Contemplate Our Doom

Fortunately, this is just a thought experiment

A composite image made in Payson, Arizona, on December 28 shows Comet Lovejoy as it seemed to pass a globular cluster of stars called Messier 79.

How to See This Green Comet With the Naked Eye

The "New Year's Comet" is taking astronomers by storm with an unexpected showing, and it should only get brighter through early January

Curiosity is able to take pictures of itself on Mars using a camera mounted to its robotic arm. This mosaic was made from 55 snapshots taken in October 2012.

An Insider's Biography of a Celebrity Mars Rover

The chief engineer for Curiosity offers a peek at the NASA rover’s tumultuous rise to stardom in a new tell-all book

This Weekend, Astronomers Get Their Best Ever Look at an Oort Cloud Object

Looking at the Oort cloud is like looking back in time—a superpower hampered by the fact that the Oort cloud is very, very, very, very far away

Curtains of light weave across the sky over Fairbanks, Alaska, on September 12.

Powerful Solar Flare Paints the Sky With Candy-Colored Auroras

Two back-to-back flares sent clouds of charged particles racing toward Earth, creating auroras that may last through the weekend

The full moon is seen near Earth's horizon from the International Space Station.

Earth Is Making the Moon All Warm and Soft on the Inside

A new model boosts the notion that a layer of rock near the moon’s core is squishy and perhaps partially melted

A statue in front of the Holy Cross church in Warsaw, Poland, guides viewers toward the August 2014 supermoon.

Inspiring Photos of the Biggest, Brightest Supermoon of 2014

Feast your eyes on these snapshots from around the world

Titan’s Ocean Might Be as Salty as the Dead Sea

New data from the Cassini mission shows that the ocean under Titan's ice shell is likely very salty

Flatten Out the Moons and Planets, And You Can See Just How Big Earth Actually Is

Comparing their surface areas side-by-side gives a sense of scale to some of the solar system's inhabitants

The Sun Is Spraying Water Into Space

When the solar wind hits oxygen-rich rocks, water can form

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The Coolest Science of 2013, in GIFs

This year, we saw dissolving electronics, flying meteors, gravity-defying chains and rotting pineapples

A closeup of one of the rocks, with a patch of dust brushed away by Curiosity's instruments, that provides evidence of an ancient lake.

Curiosity Found Evidence of An Ancient Freshwater Lake on Mars

Drilling into Martian rock revealed that it formed at the bottom of a calm lake that may have had the right conditions for sustaining life

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Picture of the Week—Iron in the Sun’s Corona

The robotic Cassini spacecraft which is now orbiting Saturn looked back toward the eclipsed Sun and saw a view unlike any other.

Fantastic Photos of our Solar System

In the past decade, extraordinary space missions have found water on Mars, magnetic storms on Mercury and volcanoes on the moons of Saturn

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