Makemake, discovered in 2005, orbits the Kuiper Belt nearly 6.8 billion kilometers from the Sun and is one of the brightest objects in the outer Solar System, reflecting more than 70% of the sunlight ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Our understanding of the solar system is a work in progress. Pluto ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In the not-too-distant past, the planet Pluto was thought to be an odd bird in the outer reaches of the solar system because it has a moon, Charon, that was formed much like Earth’s ...

Japanese researchers have used computer simulation and the orbits of several large objects past Neptune to calculate that there is Kuiper Belt planet (KBP) 1.5–3 times as massive as Earth, located at ...

A brand-new group of frozen objects, orbiting the sun out beyond the distant Kuiper Belt, has been spotted by the Subaru telescope, working with NASA's New Horizons mission to find new targets for the ...

Arrokoth, a distant object in the Kuiper Belt, contains significant amounts of organic molecules, including complex sugars, giving it the new nickname "Sugar World," a study has reported. The study, ...

The dwarf planet Quaoar has a ring that is too big for its metaphorical fingers. While all other rings in the solar system lie within or near a mathematically determined distance of their parent ...

What's next? Launched in 2006 as a part of NASA's New Frontiers program, the New Horizon probe completed its primary mission with flying colors. After performing a flyby study of Pluto in 2015, New ...

On a Hawaiian mountaintop in the summer of 1992, a pair of scientists spotted a pinprick of light inching through the constellation Pisces. That unassuming object — located over a billion kilometers ...

the black dot on the horizontal axis is the current position of New Horizons – between the two belts. The orbits of objects to the right of New Horizons are the KBOs in the suspected second belt. New ...

James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile James is a ...