Far beyond Neptune, astronomers have finally confirmed a compact clump of icy worlds hiding inside the Kuiper Belt, a feature they are now calling an inner “kernel.” The tightly packed structure, ...

Fresh mapping of the outer solar system has revealed a previously unseen pattern in the Kuiper Belt, the icy ring of debris beyond Neptune that has long been treated as a relatively simple torus of ...

Astronomers have spotted an intriguing cluster of objects in the Kuiper belt, the enormous, donut-shaped region of icy objects beyond the orbit of Neptune. This latest “inner kernel” was identified by ...

An artist's illustration of the view from a Kuiper Belt object. (CREDIT: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)) Astronomers at Princeton University have uncovered evidence that the outer solar system is ...

As next-generation telescopes map this outer frontier, astronomers are bracing for discoveries that could reveal hidden planets, strange structures, and clues to the solar system’s chaotic youth. Out ...