Relatedly, astronomers may have just pushed the upper size limit of what counts as a planet.

Astronomers have found evidence of a process that supports an alternative, more rapid approach to planetary formation, more top down than bottom up. By Katrina Miller When it comes to making a planet, ...

A distant star system with four super-sized gas giants has revealed a surprise. Thanks to JWST’s powerful vision, astronomers detected sulfur in their atmospheres — a chemical clue that they formed ...

There's a comforting idea in planetary science. That no matter how strange a distant world looks, its beginnings might still ...

Gas giants are large planets mostly composed of helium and/or hydrogen. Although these planets have dense cores, they don't have hard surfaces. Jupiter and Saturn are the gas giants in our solar ...

The Saturn System has been studied in detail by the Cassini-Huygens Mission. A major thrust of those investigations has been to understand how Saturn formed and evolved and to place Saturn in the ...