The solar system has too many moons – it's time for a cull
23 October 2019
Designating rocks just a few kilometres across as moons is misleading and ridiculous. We need to do a Pluto and cut moons down to size, argues Leah Crane
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Found 678 results for dwarf planet
How to use the Orion constellation to find Sirius the dog star
16 October 2019
Some of the sky's brightest stars including Rigel and Betelgeuse are located in the iconic constellation Orion. Here's how to find it and then star-hop to Sirius
Microbial life might drift in the atmospheres of failed stars
7 October 2019
Brown dwarfs are too large to be planets and too small to be stars, but they have gaseous atmospheres that may have all the ingredients needed for life
We could find alien life on exoplanets by looking for its glow
20 August 2019
Most of the closest exoplanets we’ve found orbit stars that can release flares of dangerous UV light, but those very flares might force life to evolve to glow
How the coolest, smallest stars could help us discover new exoplanets
7 August 2019
Exoplanets are abundant near the galaxy's smallest stars. Observing M dwarfs could teach us more about the worlds beyond our solar system, writes Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
By Jupiter! How the solar system’s giant made Earth ripe for life
22 May 2019
An audacious mission circling Jupiter’s poles is probing the planet’s deepest mysteries - including how it shaped our solar system and paved the way for our existence
How do you name a black hole? It is actually pretty complicated
12 April 2019
The first black hole ever directly imaged now has been nicknamed Pōwehi, but making the name official will take some time
NASA traced a meteorite back to its original home in deep space
12 April 2019
An impact in the inner asteroid belt 22 million years ago was responsible for a meteorite shower over Turkey in 2015
You can help name the largest unnamed world in the solar system
9 April 2019
A dwarf planet known only as 2007 OR10 is about to get a proper name after more than a decade - and the public can help decide what we call it
A dead planet is orbiting a dead sun in a distant dead solar system
4 April 2019
A piece of a planet that survived the death of its star has been spotted orbiting the stellar corpse. Planets in our solar system may look similar when the sun dies
