Astronomers have long been puzzled by a cosmic mystery: planets orbiting two stars—like Star Wars’ Tatooine—are surprisingly rare, even though they should be common. New research suggests the culprit ...

Astronomers have found thousands of exoplanets around single stars, but few around binary stars—even though both types of stars are equally common. Physicists can now explain the dearth. Subscribe to ...

A step-by-step explanation for why planets that orbit a double star eventually enter an unstable orbit and disappear from the system. Of the more than 4,500 stars known to have planets, one puzzling ...

Thanks to the sheer mass of Jupiter and fellow gas giant Saturn, the Solar System barycenter is rarely in the center of the Sun, and often outside of the Sun altogether, as the video below from ...

This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here. CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — An asteroid that NASA used for target practice a few years ago was in fact nudged into a ...

Every year in early January, Earth reaches the closest point in its orbit to the Sun, a moment astronomers call perihelion. We are slightly nearer to our star and receiving more solar energy than we ...