There is a dwarf planet out in the Kuiper Belt that has been named Quaoar, and it tends to get more attention than would ...

New observations suggest that the dwarf planet Makemake is surrounded by faintly glowing methane gas. Scientists are unsure if the gas is contained within a wispy atmosphere or being ejected into ...

"It shows that Makemake is not an inactive remnant of the outer solar system, but a dynamic body where methane ice is still ...

A new study has proposed the existence of Planet Y, an alternative Planet Nine candidate that is smaller and closer to Earth ...

Planets that orbit white dwarf stars should be too hot to host alien life, theories suggest. But a new study accounting for ...

The methane gas may constitute a rarefied atmosphere, or it may come from erupting plumes on Makemake’s surface.

In the hunt for extraterrestrial life, we usually look for planets orbiting sun-like stars and icy moons. But there is ...

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered the remains of a frozen, Pluto-like world being devoured by a distant white dwarf star.

Scientists have detected methane gas glowing faintly above Makemake, an icy dwarf planet smaller and farther than Pluto in space. Until now, Pluto was the only object that far out in the solar system ...

Our solar system is much like a trail of microcosmic breadcrumbs: Follow the molecular bits as far back as they go, and you'll learn a thing or two about where many of our planets and other celestial ...

Dwarf planet Ceres now appears less like a dead rock and more like a world that may have briefly brimmed with potential for life Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter ...

The Copernican Principle, named in honor of Nicolaus Copernicus (who proposed the heliocentric model of the universe), states ...