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New Horizons returns first of the best images of Pluto

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has sent back the first in a series of the sharpest views of Pluto it obtained during its July flyby -- and the best close-ups of Pluto that humans may see for decades.

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Evidence of a real ninth planet discovered

Researchers have found evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the outer solar system. The object, which the researchers have nicknamed Planet Nine, has a mass about 10...

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Earth-like planets have Earth-like interiors

Every school kid learns the basic structure of the Earth: a thin outer crust, a thick mantle, and a Mars-sized core. But is this structure universal? Will rocky exoplanets orbiting other stars have the...

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Pluto’s ‘Hulk-like’ moon Charon: A possible ancient ocean?

Pluto's largest moon may have gotten too big for its own skin. Images from NASA's New Horizons mission suggest that Pluto's moon Charon once had a subsurface ocean that has long since frozen and...

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Searching for planet 9

Using observations from the Cassini spacecraft, a team of astronomers has been able to specify the possible positions of a ninth planet in the Solar System.

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What's eating at Pluto?

Far in the western hemisphere, scientists on NASA's New Horizons mission have discovered what looks like a giant "bite mark" on Pluto's surface. They suspect it may be caused by a process known as...

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New data from flyby of Pluto

Pluto's surface exhibits a wide variety of landscapes, results from five new studies. The dwarf planet has more differences than similarities with its large moon, Charon.

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Student-built dust counter got few 'hits' on Pluto flyby

A student-built instrument riding on NASA's New Horizons spacecraft found only a handful of dust grains, the building blocks of planets, when it whipped by Pluto at 31,000 miles per hour last July.

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Multitasking New Horizons observed solar wind changes on journey to Pluto

In addition to its history-making encounter with Pluto last July, the New Horizons spacecraft also recorded significant changes in how the solar wind behaves far from the sun.

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Hubble discovers moon orbiting the dwarf planet Makemake

Peering to the outskirts of our solar system, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a small, dark moon orbiting Makemake, the second brightest icy dwarf planet -- after Pluto -- in the Kuiper Belt.

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Planet Nine: A world that shouldn't exist

Earlier this year scientists presented evidence for Planet Nine, a Neptune-mass planet in an elliptical orbit 10 times farther from our Sun than Pluto. Since then theorists have puzzled over how this...

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Close encounters of a tidal kind could lead to cracks on icy moons

Researchers are offering a new explanation as to how cracks on icy moons, such as Pluto's Charon, formed. Until now, it was thought that the cracks were the result of geodynamical processes, such as...

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Pluto's polygons may have been formed by convection

On Pluto, icebergs floating in a sea of nitrogen ice are key to a possible explanation of the quilted appearance of the Sputnik Planum region of the dwarf planet's surface. Researchers have proposed...

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Pluto as a cosmic lava lamp: Giant convective cells continually refresh dwarf...

Using computer models, New Horizons team members have been able to determine the depth of the layer of solid nitrogen ice within Pluto's distinctive 'heart' feature -- a large plain informally known as...

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Present-day subsurface ocean on Pluto?

An updated thermal model for Pluto suggests that a liquid water ocean beneath the dwarf planet's ice shell is a fairly likely scenario, and that the ocean is probably still there today.

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Moon discovered over dwarf planet Makemake in the Kuiper Belt

Scientists have discovered an elusive, dark moon orbiting Makemake, one of the 'big four' dwarf planets populating the Kuiper Belt region at the edge of our solar system.

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Hubble captures vivid auroras in Jupiter’s atmosphere

Astronomers are using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to study auroras -- stunning light shows in a planet's atmosphere -- on the poles of the largest planet in the Solar System, Jupiter.

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Astronomers discover new distant dwarf planet beyond Neptune

Astronomers have discovered a new dwarf planet orbiting in the disk of small icy worlds beyond Neptune. The new object is about 700 km in diameter and has one of the largest orbits for a dwarf planet....

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Hunt for ninth planet reveals new extremely distant solar system objects

In the race to discover a proposed ninth planet in our Solar System, researchers have observed several never-before-seen objects at extreme distances from the Sun in our Solar System.

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Pluto 'paints' its largest moon red

In June 2015, when the cameras on NASA's approaching New Horizons spacecraft first spotted the large reddish polar region on Pluto's largest moon, Charon, mission scientists knew two things: they'd...

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