Perihelion is the point at which an orbiting body is closest to the sun. The word comes from Greek and literally means around ...

A planet circling at a sharp 90-degree angle to the orbits of its two host stars has now been confirmed. This discovery challenges long-standing ideas about how planets form and orbit in the cosmos.

If you were to perfectly follow the steps in An Idiot's Guide to Making a Solar System, you should eventually find yourself with a star surrounded by a flat disc of planetary material orbiting in ...

Planet hunters have grown used to strange worlds, but a handful of discoveries now point to something even more radical: giant planets that loop around their stars on orbits so skewed they almost defy ...

Studying the orbits of thousands of exoplanets shows that large planets tend to have elliptical orbits, while smaller planets tend to have more circular orbits. This split coincides with several other ...

A new study has challenged a popular explanation for the unexpected 30-second shortening of Dimorphos's orbital period. The researchers found that the proposed mechanism would actually produce the ...

Southwest Research Institute scientists propose a new model for the formation of compact exoplanetary systems that contain multiple rocky planets in tight orbits around their star. In this model, ...

Aerobraking is commonly used to slow down spacecraft when they arrive at various planetary systems. It requires a spacecraft to dip into the atmosphere of a celestial body in the planetary system, ...