Our search for exoplanets is focused on Milky Way stars. It's been successful, with more than 6,000 detected so far.

For the first time, scientists have built a digital version of the Milky Way that follows the motion of individual stars, not ...

What can the galactic habitable zone (GHZ), galactic regions where complex life is hypothesized to be able to evolve, teach scientists about finding the correct stars that could have habitable planets ...

For a decade and a half, astronomers have been on the trail of a galactic mystery. In 2011, a project that surveyed the Milky Way galaxy for exoplanets — which are planets beyond our solar system — ...

The official number of exoplanets—planets outside our solar system—tracked by NASA has reached 6,000. Confirmed planets are added to the count on a rolling basis by scientists from around the world, ...

In the past two decades, astronomers have discovered nearly 2,000 planets orbiting sun-like stars in the solar neighborhood of the Milky Way galaxy, and humanity is now a little bit closer to ...

Some of the most promising places to look for extraterrestrials have remained, so far, mostly hidden from astronomers. Now a game-changing instrument called NIRPS (Near-Infrared Planet Searcher) is ...