How does a planet’s size influence its orbit around its parent star? This is what a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences hopes to address as a team of ...

Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content. Earth on Tuesday made its closest approach to the sun, an annual celestial event that happens to occur at the start of the new year. The ...

Studying the orbits of thousands of exoplanets shows that large planets tend to have elliptical orbits, while smaller planets tend to have more circular orbits. This split coincides with several other ...

Earth’s annual orbit around the Sun is not always perfectly circular; instead, it displays variations in what is known as eccentricity — in which the planet’s orbit varies between a more-circular and ...

Strange giant planets known as hot Jupiters, which orbit close to their suns, got kicked onto their peculiar paths by nearby planets and stars, a new study finds. After analyzing the orbits of dozens ...