So you know what a star is, right? Well, if you don't, you should. We've talked about that big one in the sky a few times: The Sun! But there are a lot of bright dots in the night sky and not all of them are stars. Today, let's play a...

Astronomer Aomawa Shields searches for clues that life might exist elsewhere in the universe by examining the atmospheres of distant exoplanets. When she isn't exploring the heavens, the classically trained actor (and TED Fellow) looks...

Caitlin Hofmeister gives you the latest news from around the universe, including Kepler's latest exoplanet discovery, an upcoming solar eclipse, and a breathtaking image from Hubble.

An explanation and model illustrating that differences in the apparent brightness of the sun compared to other stars are due to their relative distances from the Earth. Using the power of storytelling and cutting-edge technology this...

While Jupiter is nowhere near massive enough to initiate fusion in its core, there are even more massive objects out there that fall just short of that achievement as well called brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs, have a mass that places them...

New simulations of a triple-star system in the constellation Orion suggest that a planet might be orbiting three stars, which could drastically increase the amount of the solar systems we believe are out there forming planets! And the...

Four rocky inner planets and four gaseous outer planets - makes sense, right? But when astronomers turned their eyes to planets beyond our star system they found out that many systems are set up differently. Why?

Tidally locked planets could be more common than Earth-like planets! And these 'eyeball planets' might even be a promising place to look for unique lifeforms!

We have new insights into the bizarre nature of lava planets, and the icy moon Europa may yet reveal some of her salty secrets.

Stars are our stellar alchemists. They spend their entire lifespan creating and molding elements. In their final moments, a supernova spreads these elements out into the universe, providing the building blocks for new stars, planets, and...

SPHERE took a photo of a baby planet and the origin of the asteroid belt may be less mysterious than we thought.

Shortly after Jupiter formed, it might have been struck by an object that may have otherwise become its own planet! And researchers have a new estimate of how many Earth-like planets might exist.

This video explores the similarities between Saturn and newly forming star systems, highlighting the relevance of studying Saturn's rings and its moon Titan for understanding planetary formation. It also discusses the detection of over...

Hank tells us about the Kepler Space Telescope and its new data!

Something massive, with roughly 1,000 times the area of earth, is blocking the light coming from a distant star known as KIC 8462852, and nobody is quite sure what it is. As astronomer Tabetha Boyajian investigated this perplexing...

Why is the universe organized the way it is? And why is it so empty? From planets and stars to superclusters and galactic filaments, the universe's largest structures formed because of its smallest. In this special collaboration with PHD...

Scientists have witnessed a star engulfing a planet, offering a glimpse of Earth's distant fate as the Sun expands in billions of years.

See Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and Mars this month. Also, see the Winter Stars, Winter Triangle, the Geminid Meteor Shower. <b<br/>r/>

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Extreme environments full of life on Earth have led researchers to expand the definition of habitability to something that includes many more planets, potentially leading us to evidence of living things in a dramatically shorter time!...

Hunting for rogue planets is like hunting for an invisible needle in a haystack. But we're getting a much clearer view thanks to gravitational microlensing surveys. And it looks like there are a LOT more of them out there than we thought.

Scientists have discovered a shard of a planet that survived the death of its star and TESS has found the first direct evidence of an exocomet.

Meet one of the newest celestial bodies to be discovered: rogue planets, worlds that hurtle around the galaxy without any parent star. Caitlin Hofmeister explains how we found them, and where we think they might have come from.

Last week we covered multiple star systems, but what if we added thousands or even millions of stars to the mix? A star cluster. There are different kinds of clusters, though. Open clusters contain hundreds or thousands of stars held...

This week in space. Scientists have discovered a black hole that could possibly everything we know about black holes, and also, evidence that planets, yes planets, could form around super massive black holes.