A distant star system with four super-sized gas giants has revealed a surprise. Thanks to JWST’s powerful vision, astronomers detected sulfur in their atmospheres — a chemical clue that they formed ...

General relativity helps explain the lack of planets around tight binary stars by driving orbital resonances that eject or destroy close-in worlds. This process naturally creates a “desert” of ...

Gas giants are large planets mostly composed of helium and/or hydrogen. Although these planets have dense cores, they don't ...

Detection of hydrogen sulfide in four HR 8799 gas giants provides evidence of solid accretion, clarifying how massive exoplanets form and distinguishing them from brown dwarfs ...

Astronomers have found thousands of exoplanets around single stars, but few around binary stars—even though both types of stars are equally common. Physicists can now explain the dearth.

A newly identified planet candidate, HD 137010 b, looks strikingly Earth-like in size and orbit — but it may be colder than Mars due to its dimmer star. If it has a thick enough atmosphere, though, ...

Key takeawaysIf a gas giant planet is big enough to ignite deuterium fusion, it becomes a brown dwarf instead of a planet.

With this new survey, astronomers have gained a peek inside a stage of exoplanet system formation they have yet to fully ...

If a gas giant planet is big enough to ignite deuterium fusion, it becomes a brown dwarf instead of a planet. But this definition is incomplete and does not tell us how gas giants form or what ...

Relatedly, astronomers may have just pushed the upper size limit of what counts as a planet.

A small red dwarf star in the Milky Way has drawn attention after astronomers mapped four closely orbiting planets around it. The system, known as LHS.

Why is it so rare to find exoplanets orbiting two stars, also called circumbinary planets (CBPs)? This is what a recent study ...