Although astronomers have directly imaged a few dozen gas giants on the scale of Jupiter, Earth-sized planets are too small and dim to be directly imaged. That's not to say there's a shortage of Earth ...

Relative sizes of the newly discovered habitable-zone planets and Earth. Left to right: Kepler-69c, Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f and Earth (except for Earth, these are artists' renditions). Image credit: ...

It provides a dynamic, time-resolved view of planetary transformation, a missing link between young inflated worlds and the compact sub-Neptunes that populate the galaxy.

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American The prolific planet-hunting spacecraft that ...

Scientists have devised a new method for mapping the spottiness of distant stars by using observations from NASA missions of orbiting planets crossing their stars’ faces. The model builds on a ...