Researchers in the Netherlands and in the US are the first to measure directly the mass of a planet orbiting a star other than our Sun. In developing their new technique, they also discovered that ...

In a recent study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, astronomers at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MIPA) studied the demographics of an unprecedented large sample of planet-forming disks ...

In our solar system, Jupiter is the biggest planet at 88,846 miles in equatorial diameter — the distance through the planet from one side to the other at its equator — and a mass of 1,898 × 10^24 kg.

’The ultimate goal of astronomers who look for planets orbiting other stars is to find a planet like Earth—the same mass, orbiting at the same distance from a sun-like star. We’re not there yet.

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. An award-winning reporter writing about stargazing and the night sky. Think our solar system is "normal?" Think again. The most ...