An artist's impression of the occultation of 2002 XV93. (NAOJ/Ko Arimatsu) In the wild unknown, out beyond the orbit of Neptune, astronomers have found a tiny world that defies our understanding of skies.

The Hoba meteorite in Namibia is the largest known natural piece of iron on Earth, weighing about 60 metric tons today. By simple logic and physics, a metal object that massive should have smashed into the planet with catastrophic force and left a crater.

The Earth’s atmosphere is experiencing an accelerated rate of atmospheric escape, leading to a faster loss of gases into space than previously observed. This revelation, founded on recent scientific research, carries substantial implications for our ...

This model reveals how vastly different the atmosphere was on ancient Earth, and how life may have first emerged. The key to unlocking the secrets of distant planets starts right here on Earth. Researchers at Tohoku University, the University of Tokyo, and ...

Astronomers have detected over 5,800 confirmed exoplanets. One extreme class is ultra-hot Jupiters, of particular interest because they can provide a unique window into planetary atmospheric dynamics. According to a new paper published in the journal ...

Astronomers have detected a thin atmosphere around a tiny celestial body in the outer solar system for the first time — an object previously thought to be too small to support the presence of an atmosphere.

Researchers have created a dataset of the whole atmosphere, enabling new research to be conducted on previously difficult-to-study regions. Using a new data-assimilation system called JAGUAR-DAS, which combines numerical modeling with observational data ...