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Voyager 2 flew past Uranus in 1986, finding a bland, featureless world. Now, in 2023, JWST's sights are similar. There's a reason for that.

We've only seen Uranus up close once: from Voyager 2, back in 1986. The next time we do it, its features will look entirely different.

The outer planets' clouds hide the weirdness within.

While Saturn and its moons all appear faint and cloudy to JWST, Saturn's rings are the star of the show. Here's the big scientific reason.

Gravitation, all on its own, can reveal what's present in the cosmos like nothing else.

The story of how Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune were made isn't a universal one. Some gas giants were built different.

Do you think you know the Solar System? Here's a fact about each planet that might surprise you when you see it!

Newton thought that gravitation would happen instantly, propagating at infinite speeds. Einstein showed otherwise; gravity isn't instant.

Within the next few decades, we may well have hard evidence for the existence of alien life on worlds light-years distant from Earth.

Human beings are tiny creatures compared to the 92 billion light-year wide observable Universe. How can we comprehend such large scales?

The space telescope's findings challenge the notion of a galaxy brimming with life.

No planet enters retrograde more frequently than Mercury, which does so 3-4 times each year. Here’s the scientific explanation for why.

The classic picture of Jupiter's great rocky core might be entirely wrong.

Many planets will eventually be devoured by their parent star. For the first time, we caught a star in the act, eating its innermost planet!

Water is vital for life. Luckily for spacefaring humans, the solar system is full of it.

The giant impact theory suggests our Moon was formed from proto-Earth getting a Mars-sized strike. An exoplanet system shows it's plausible.

The secret ingredient is violence, and it just might indicate that "moonmoons" aren't as uncommon as most astronomers think.

Neptune holds records in our Solar System, but the Universe gets even faster. Here on Earth, extreme weather events can cause dramatic wind speed spikes. When hurricanes are at their most […]

Science is for everyone, even those possessing strongly held beliefs that seem to conflict with the best available evidence.

The James Webb Space Telescope viewed Neptune, our Solar System's final planet, for the first time. Here's what we saw, and what it means.

In terms of the planets we've discovered, super-Earths are by far the most common. What does that mean for the Universe?

You might be inclined to modify gravity instead, but those ideas have grossly unequal evidence supporting them. What is it, exactly, that you’re supposed to do when the predictions of […]

Want some crazy space phenomena? You don't have to leave the neighborhood for it.

Get ready for the most peculiar road trip that will help you understand the vastness and emptiness of the solar system — and Sweden.

Every observation out into deep space is also a look back in time. Whenever you observe an object, you aren’t viewing it in its present state. When one of Jupiter’s moons […]

If there are human-sized creatures walking around on other planets, would we be able to view them directly?

Jupiter's mysterious auroral events are caused by vibrating waves of plasma.

Scientists find routes using arches of chaos that can lead to much faster space travel.

In 1990, we only knew of the planets in our own Solar System. Today, the exoplanet count is more than 5000. Here's what we've learned.

On other planets, blue skies and red sunsets aren't the norm.