Astronomer helping NASA spacecraft explore beyond Pluto

The computer found it first – Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69  – but University of Virginia astronomer Anne Verbiscer was the "human backup" who found it next. She confirmed the finding for NASA by using the same technique ...

New Horizons collects first science on a post-Pluto object

Warming up for a possible extended mission as it speeds through deep space, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has now twice observed 1994 JR1, a 90-mile (145-kilometer) wide Kuiper Belt object (KBO) orbiting more than 3 billion ...

Hubble discovers moon orbiting the dwarf planet Makemake

Peering to the outskirts of our solar system, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a small, dark moon orbiting Makemake, the second brightest icy dwarf planet—after Pluto—in the Kuiper Belt.

How do we know there's a Planet 9?

At this point, I think the astronomy textbook publishers should just give up. They'd like to tell you how many planets there are in the solar system, they really would. But astronomers just can't stop discovering new worlds, ...

The long hunt for new objects in our expanding solar system

Recognise these planet names: Vulcan, Neptune, Pluto, Nemesis, Tyche and Planet X? They all have one thing in common: their existence was predicted to account for unexplained phenomena in our solar system.

Researchers find evidence of a real ninth planet

Caltech researchers have found evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the outer solar system. The object, which the researchers have nicknamed Planet Nine, has a mass about 10 times that of ...

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