How do you picture the solar system? Most of us imagine the eight planets as colorful balls of varying sizes moving in orbits that comfortably fit within the confines of our computer screens. But ...

Prevailing solar system formation theories indicate that these planets should have at least started out following perfectly circular and share the same orbit.

The action is unfolding in a location comparable to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter containing the leftover building blocks of our solar system’s planets.

HOPS-315 is also giving astronomers a new opportunity to study early planet formation, serving as a stand-in for newborn solar systems across the galaxy.

Arrokoth is a planetesimal in the Kuiper Belt, a vast stretch of space beyond Neptune that holds remnant building blocks of the solar system leftover from our cosmic neighborhood's formation.

Astronomers have witnessed the early formation of a solar system for the first time.

Ultimately, without a time machine, we will never fully recover the precise history of our solar system's formation, so we will never be entirely sure what role giant impacts had in the ...

The largest celestial bodies in our solar system that still exist—massive asteroids and minor planets—are thought to be the last vestiges of this era of planetary formation.