Orbital resonance – the striking gravitational dance performed by planets with aligned orbits

Planets orbit their parent stars while separated by enormous distances. In our solar system, planets are like grains of sand in an area the size of a football field. The time it takes for planets to revolve around their sun has no specific relationship with each other. But sometimes their orbits show striking patterns. For … Read more

This rare exoplanet system has 6 ‘sub-Neptunes’ with mathematically perfect orbits

Astronomers have discovered an unusual star system located just 100 light-years away from us, with six planets immensely close to their parent star – so close, in fact, that all their orbits could fit within the distance between the stars. Mercury and our sun. It’s puzzling that this new part of the cosmos, unlike our … Read more