In a real-life twist on Star Wars' Tatooine—a harsh desert planet with twin suns and a criminal underbelly—astronomers have found a bizarre new world that orbits two stars at a perfect right angle.

Pluto has not completed a single orbit since its 1930 discovery. With a 248-year journey around the Sun, the dwarf planet will finish its first full circuit in 2178.

Every second, the Earth spins at an incredible speed, completing a full rotation in just 24 hours. While this may seem ordinary, the simple act of our planet turning on its axis is responsible for the ...

A team of astronomers observed a confused exoplanet orbiting its two parent stars in a highly unusual way. As New Scientist reports, the planet, which was first discovered in 2004, is located in a ...

If you think auroras on Earth are a strange and mesmerizing sight, that's nothing like what occurs on the perplexing world of Uranus.

Somewhere deep below Saturn s cloud tops, the planet rotates at a constant speed. Determining this interior period of rotation has proven extremely complicated. Now, with new Cassini results, a team ...

A day on Earth lasts a familiar 24 hours, but across the solar system, time moves very differently. Some planets rotate slowly that a single day can last longer than an entire year, while others spin ...

It’s not so much a traditional clock as it is a measuring tool, but it’s all that’s needed to do some basic, interplanetary calculations As an example, the team suggests a scenario in which a ...

Tracking the rotation speed of solid planets, like the Earth and Mars, is a relatively simple task: Just measure the time it takes for a surface feature to roll into view again. But giant gas planets ...

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Earth has four seasons due to its 23.5-degree tilt and the shape of its orbit around the sun. But ...

A possible cousin of Pluto seems to be circling the far reaches of the solar system. The dwarf planet candidate 2017 OF201 travels in a superwide orbit, with the sun relatively near one end of its ...