Pluto, the largest of the dwarf planets. This image was taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft.
NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
The dwarf planets in our Solar System are cold, dark, far away and full of surprises.
Starlink satellites are quite visible in the night sky.
(Shutterstock)
Megaconstellations of satellites will visually clutter the night sky, disrupting astronomical research. And the environmental damage caused by these satellites is still unknown.
An artist’s concept of a hypothetical planet with a distant sun.
(Shutterstock)
In the search for the hypothetical Planet Nine, scientists may have uncovered another explanation for the patterns in the orbits of Kuiper Belt objects.
A natural color image of Pluto taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft in 2015.
(NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Alex Parker)
A young reader asks: Is Pluto a planet?
Arrokoth.
Quapan/Flickr
Meet Arrokoth – one of the first generation of solar system objects.
Where are the smallest of the icy worlds we thought resided in the Kuiper belt?
ESO/Flickr
There’s a mysterious lack of small bodies beyond Neptune, but a ‘snowman-shaped’ object may help explain why.
The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope has spotted a new dwarf planet.
Michele Banister
It turns out that a common physical process called diffusion can explain the orbits of faraway minor planets – no need for a Planet Nine.
Artist’s impression: Looking back 12.9-billion km towards the sun and the inner solar system from Sedna, one of the recently discovered minor planets in the Kuiper belt.
NASA, ESA and Adolf Schaller
The search for new objects, including new planets, in our solar system has turned up some interesting finds. There have been a few failures over the years too.
Image Editor/Flickr
A new planet in our solar system? Let’s get direct proof before we start naming it.
Ceres: a bright spot in planetary exploration.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Is it a dwarf planet, an asteroid or a comet? All of the above? Well, with the latest results about Ceres, researchers aren’t entirely sure anymore.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Space scientists have a busy decade ahead with plans to visit Jupiter, Mars, Mercury and other interplanetary bodies all on the cards.