How Planets Form: &#39;It&#39;s a Mess Out There&#39;
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New observations of dust around young stars suggests collisions of large asteroid-like objects and fledgling planets are frequent.
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This animation illustrates a massive collision between rocky, embryonic planets as big as mountain ranges. Such collisions form the basis of the planet-building process.
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By Sandi Doughton, Seattle Times  Dec. 15--University of Washington astronomer Don Brownlee expected surprises from the pinch of comet dust collected by the Stardust spacecraft.   But he didn't foresee such a shake-up.
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The Cassini spacecraft&#39;s close flyby of Saturn&#39;s mysterious moon Titan this week revealed clouds that will give clues to its weather, but the pass left scientists still puzzled about its surface.
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Is this newly discovered feeble point of light the long-sought bona-fide image of an exoplanet? A research paper by an international team of astronomers provides sound arguments in favor, but the definitive answer is now awaiting further observations.
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A massive eruption of atomic oxygen from Saturnâs outer rings, seen by Cassiniâs ultraviolet camera as the spacecraft neared its destination, may be an indication that the planetâs wispy E ring is eroding so fast that it could disappear within 100
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It may take much longer than scientists have thought for violent turbulence to turn grains of space dust into new planets. A NASA telescope recently discovered
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SAN FRANCISCO: Pictures of Earth-like clouds were captured by Nasa&#39;s Mars rover on Wednesday. Reports also indicate that there&#39;s a rock that doesn&#39;t look like anything scientists have ever seen.
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Early snapshots of Titan, the enigmatic moon of Saturn, show it may be dimpled with huge lakes. Its surface also seems to be etched with cracks or ridges - similar in signature to pressure ridges found in ice flows at the Earth&#39;s polar caps.
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The business of building planets is messier and more chaotic than scientists realized, according to new observations from NASA&#39;s Spitzer Space Telescope.
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It may take much longer than scientists have thought for violent turbulence to turn grains of space dust into new planets. A NASA telescope recently discovered evidence that
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By Seth Borenstein THE ASSOCIATED PRESS  WASHINGTON -- The first "sniffs of air" of two huge far-away planets reveal that they seem to be missing water, a surprising finding amid weather unlike any planets in our solar system with blast furnace-like gusts amid supersonic winds.
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Objects in the Kuiper Belt - the region beyond Pluto&#39;s orbit where many comets originate - may be much smaller than astronomers thought, according to observations made with NASA&#39;s Spitzer infrared telescope.
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An embryonic star, just beginning its life as the center of a planetary system, is apparently deluged with massive rainfall as icy material vaporizes and refreezes. Astronomers are observing one such star in a nebula about 1,000 light years from Earth with the Spitzer Space Telescope.
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Finding planets that pass in front of their parent stars is so important to understanding how planets form that the European Space Agency will shortly launch the 35 million Euro COROT satellite to find them.
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New observations of dust around young stars suggest collisions of large asteroid-like objects and fledgling planets are frequent. But that doesn&#39;t likely stop the formation
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While striving to find ever smaller, more rocky worlds, planet hunters have moved from discovering not just Jupiter-class planets outside our solar system. Now astronomers have found two new Neptune-class planets on their road to pinpointing a new Earth-like system.