Exoplanets

The nearby star Vega, featured in the 1997 movie Contact, appears to have a smooth disk devoid of giant planets for reasons we can’t explain

This blazingly fast star is shooting through the Milky Way with a planet in tow

The Jupiter-like world Epsilon Indi Ab is one of the coldest—and closest—exoplanets that astronomers have ever seen

Alien worlds that glow like lightbulbs or harbor molten-rock rain are revealing planets’ profound cosmic diversity—and pointing the way toward finding those that truly resemble our own familiar Earth

The atmosphere of exoplanet WASP-76b may rain iron and form a strange, rainbow-like phenomenon called a “glory” never yet seen outside the solar system

New analyses cast doubt on claims that a meteor witnessed over the South Pacific in 2014 came from another star system and raise questions about a high-profile expedition to recover the fireball’s fragments from the seafloor

Snapshots of a plethora of planet-forming disks offer more than just eye candy—they also reveal some fundamental aspects of how worlds are born

The next year of science for the James Webb Space Telescope has been selected. It includes remote galaxy observations and, at last, a hunt for exomoons

New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope are exposing the pathways that water takes to reach terrestrial planets

We’re looking for another Earth. But how likely is it that we’ll find a duplicate of home?

Information theory can help us decode signs of biological activity hiding in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets

No one has ever seen a newborn star feeding on its natal disk anywhere outside our galaxy—that is, until now