For decades, the search for alien life has revolved around a narrow ring around stars where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. That “habitable zone” remains important, but astronomers are ...

When astronomers search for planets that could host liquid water on their surface, they start by looking at a star's habitable zone. Water is a key ingredient for life, and on a planet too close to ...

One of seven Earth-sized planets, TRAPPIST-1d, caught the attention of NASA researchers and is one of the promising planets ...

When an exoplanet passes in front of its star, irregularities in the light curve can betray the presence of dark regions on the star's surface, providing clues about magnetic activity and ...

Researchers have pinpointed a super-Earth in the habitable zone of a nearby M-dwarf star only 18 light-years away.

The planets have been nicknamed Earth's seven sisters. — -- An international team of astronomers has discovered seven potentially habitable exoplanets — or planets outside our solar system — that ...

What happens when a planet contains immense quantities of water but is far too hot for that water to remain liquid?

An exoplanet covered in so many volcanoes that its molten surface radiates a fiery red has been discovered orbiting a star 66 light-years from Earth. That sentence may ring a bell for Star Wars fans, ...

A new study using data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope provides a rare glimpse of conditions on the surface of a rocky planet orbiting a star beyond the Sun. The study, published today in the ...

The team discovered that the surface might contain liquid water, an essential ingredient for life. Astronomers from the, Irvine have discovered a planet orbiting within the “habitable zone” of its ...

A planet has been discovered lurking in the habitable zone of not one, but two, stars. This far-off planet, situated around 310 light-years from Earth, has been found to exist within the two-star ...

Astronomers are just beginning to scratch the surface of the complex, and sometimes violent, relationships between planets ...