This causes the timetable of celestial events to creep forward until leap year sets them back every four years. The sun (Latin: sol) appears to stand still (Latin: stare) on the horizon at rise and ...

The planet's orbit also plays a crucial role. A highly elliptical orbit, like that of Kepler-735c, can lead to extreme climatic variations. The presence of liquid water is another essential criterion.

With 10 times the mass of our planet, and spending only part of its orbit in the habitable zone, Kepler-725c is very different to Earth.

A team of researchers has discovered a new exoplanet in the system of the star Kepler-725. According to the astronomers, the planet is located in the habitable zone.

Using the now-retired Kepler space telescope, astronomers have discovered that larger planets grow up in more turbulent homes than smaller worlds.

How does a planet’s size influence its orbit around its parent star? This is what a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences hopes to address as a team of ...

Earth has a nearly circular orbit, but some planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets, have very elliptical orbits.

Studying the orbits of thousands of exoplanets shows that large planets tend to have elliptical orbits, while smaller planets tend to have more circular orbits. This split coincides with several ...

Even with their orbits taking the "imperfect" shape of an ellipse, Kepler showed that a planet swept out an equal geometric area of its orbit over the same length of time, no matter where in its ...

Once a new moving object is found, its orbit needs to be determined. Is it on a circular path out past Mars, or does it have an elliptical orbit that brings it close to Earth? This is where Kepler ...

A seismic shift occurred in astronomy during the Scientific Revolution, beginning with 16th-century polymath Copernicus and his proposal that the Earth revolved around the sun. By the 17th century, ...