The Universe: Planetary Systems
Planetary Systems includes topics such as Extrasolar and Solar planets and Planetology. A planetary system consists of the various non-stellar objects orbiting a star such as planets, moons, asteroids, meteoroids, comets, and cosmic dust. The Sun and its planetary system, which includes Earth, is known as the Solar System. Planetary systems are generally believed to form as part of the same process which results in star formation. Accepted theories today argue that a protoplanetary disk forms by gravitational collapse of a molecular cloud and then evolves into a planetary system by collisions and gravitational capture.
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Featured Article
SIM PlanetQuest
SIM (Space Interferometry Mission), scheduled for launch within the next decade, will be the most powerful planet-hunting space telescope ever devised. Using two separated mirrors and combining their...
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Featured Blog Post
Detecting Extrasolar Planets
The first detection of extrasolar planets was announced in 1995 by two competing groups. One was headed by Geoff Marcy, then at San Francisco State University, the other by Michel Mayor at the Geneva...
Latest News
In All the Universe, Just 10 Percent of Solar Systems Are Like Ours
WASHINGTON, DC (Jan. 5, 2010) – In their quest to find solar systems analogous to ours, astronomers have determined how common our solar system is. They’ve concluded that about 15...
News Articles
- NASA's Kepler Space Telescope Discovers Five Exoplanets
- Let the Planet Hunt Begin
- A Little Telescope Goes a Long Way
- Avatar's Moon Pandora Could Be Real
- First Direct Observation of a Planet-like Object Orbiting a Star Similar to the Sun.
- 32 New Exoplanets Found
- Astronomers do it Again: Find Organic Molecules Around Gas Planet


