A newly discovered warp in the outer Solar System may have been created by a small, rocky world, much closer to the Sun than ...

The post Astronomers Surprised To Find A New Moon Or Ring Around A Dwarf Planet In The Kuiper Belt first on TwistedSifter.

"It shows that Makemake is not an inactive remnant of the outer solar system, but a dynamic body where methane ice is still ...

The methane gas may constitute a rarefied atmosphere, or it may come from erupting plumes on Makemake’s surface.

Planets that orbit white dwarf stars should be too hot to host alien life, theories suggest. But a new study accounting for ...

Scientists have detected methane gas glowing faintly above Makemake, an icy dwarf planet smaller and farther than Pluto in space. Until now, Pluto was the only object that far out in the solar system ...

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered the remains of a frozen, Pluto-like world being devoured by a distant white dwarf star.

It will be a while before you can see it for yourself, however. Halley’s comet was last visible from Earth in 1986, meaning ...

The dwarf planet Ceres, tucked away in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, has long been considered a quiet, frozen remnant of the early solar system. With its airless surface, icy shell, and ...

Our solar system is much like a trail of microcosmic breadcrumbs: Follow the molecular bits as far back as they go, and you'll learn a thing or two about where many of our planets and other celestial ...