Our solar system exists in one of the Milky Way's smaller spiral arms — the Orion-Cygnus arm — which radiates out from the center of the galaxy. While we can use our vantage point to view ...

Most have been found via microlensing: their gravity acts as a lens that boosts the light of a background star in a ...

If a hypothetical Milky Way TDE’s cosmic rays lined up with the solar system, the effects would cause almost incomprehensible devastation. The energy beams could strip planetary atmospheres ...

Those "arms" resemble the elongated structures of a spiral galaxy, like our very own Milky Way. At an epic timescale "comparable to the age of the solar system," which is 4.6 billion years old ...

The Milky Way is one of billions of galaxies in the universe and home to our own solar system. It appears as a hazy band in the sky when viewed from Earth.

An international team has discovered the most distant spiral galaxy candidate known to date. This ultra-massive system existed just one billion years after the Big Bang and already shows a remarkably ...

In fact, it takes more than four years for light to travel from the nearest star to our solar system. Meanwhile, exoplanets are both small and dim, and the Milky Way is a 100,000-light-year-wide ...

None? One? Four? We’ll likely never know; our solar system’s 4.6-billion-year history offers a long time for shedding worlds into the Milky Way. But there very well could be galactic nomads ...

This composite of planets in our solar system was taken by various NASA spacecraft. Included in the image are (from top to bottom) Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Credit: NASA/JPL.

Our solar system's journey around the center of the Milky Way takes it through varying galactic environments, and one may have had a lasting impact on Earth's climate, according to a new study.