Astronomers have long been intrigued by the makeup of the asteroid belt’s largest body. When it was first spotted in 1801, Ceres appeared dry and rocky, its surface marked by craters and dents. For ...

In the outer reaches of the Solar System, beyond the ice giant Neptune, lies a ring of comets and dwarf planets known as the Kuiper Belt. The closest of these objects are billions of kilometers away.

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 ...

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered that a system of asteroids in the distant Kuiper Belt may be triplets, not twins ...

The trans-Neptunian region, extending beyond Neptune, represents a primordial reservoir of icy and rocky bodies that have remained relatively unchanged since the Solar System’s formation. Central to ...

Trying to understand the makeup and evolution of the solar system's Kuiper belt has kept researchers busy since it was hypothesized soon after the discovery of Pluto in 1930. In particular, binary ...

Mexico, N.Y. – Malaki Sandejas, 8, loves a dwarf planet. Sitting next to his mom on their couch, he rattles off the five in our solar system. “The dwarf planets are Haumea, Makemake, Eris, Ceres and ...

The New Horizons spacecraft, launched in 2006, is now 60 times farther from the sun than Earth. Zooming through the outer reaches of the solar system, A NASA spacecraft just clocked a distance 60 ...

"The universe is filled with a range of three-body systems, including the closest stars to Earth, the Alpha Centauri star system, and we're finding that the Kuiper Belt may be no exception!" When you ...