When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. An illustration of confirmed dwarf planets and their moons. From left to right: Pluto (with ...

Our solar system is much like a trail of microcosmic breadcrumbs: Follow the molecular bits as far back as they go, and you'll learn a thing or two about where many of our planets and other celestial ...

This is an image of Ceres, the nearest dwarf planet to Earth in the solar system. A new dwarf planet extremely far from the sun may have just been discovered. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / ...

"It's very rare to discover an object both large and with an exotic orbit." A potential new dwarf planet has been discovered in the outer reaches of the solar system, and its existence poses the ...

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope detected material from a Pluto-like body spiraling into a white dwarf star 260 light-years away from Earth. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Tim Pyle illustration For the ...

In approximately 5 billion years, the sun will deplete its hydrogen fuel and collapse under its own gravity, becoming a white dwarf. Though Earth-sized, this dense remnant will retain much of the ...

But what, exactly, is a dwarf planet? And how many dwarf planets are there? A dwarf planet is a celestial body that is smaller than a planet but bigger than an asteroid or other small rock in the ...