The Solar System is the name given to the part of space that surrounds the Sun. Even though it is bigger than anything we can imagine, the Solar System is actually a very tiny part of the universe.

Approximately 4.5 billion years ago, a cold cloud of gas and dust buried deep in one of the Milky Way galaxy’s spiral arms started to collapse. From there, gravity worked its magic. The cloud began to ...

Jupiter has 79 moons and is known as the 'king of the planets'. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Jupiter is the largest planet in ...

Editor's note: This article was updated March 25 at 11:40 a.m. ET to account for the recent discovery of new moons around Saturn and Jupiter. The total number of planetary moons and small-body ...

Eleven objects found at the extremities of the solar system could mark the location of a 'Kuiper Belt 2.' When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how ...

From meteorites that impact Earth, to a moon that orbits backwards, to an imposter lurking in the asteroid belt, a variety of strange, wandering worlds are rewriting what we know – and even how we ...

The standard story of the origin of our solar system has gone like this: 4.6 billion years ago, a giant cloud of dust hung frozen in space. Then the explosion of a nearby star caused part of that dust ...

On a Hawaiian mountaintop in the summer of 1992, a pair of scientists spotted a pinprick of light inching through the constellation Pisces. That unassuming object — located over a billion kilometers ...

The solar system's largest moon may be heating up The largest moon in the solar system — Jupiter’s Ganymede — has a unique and inexplicable magnetic field. New research could finally explain it: the ...