How did our cosmic home—the solar system— fashion itself? This is a tale of billions of years. Put another way, begin with a ...

The dust speck had been plucked from ... Early on they were embedded in the disk-shaped solar nebula, which was still full of icy and rocky debris. As the planets absorbed those planetesimals ...

Discover the order of planets in the solar system. From Mercury to Neptune, explore our solar system and learn more about our cosmic home. The solar system is our cosmic neighborhood, made up of ...

The dark nebula is part of the Circinus West molecular cloud, which stretches for 180 light-years, containing a mass 250,000 times that of the sun.

Objects like these are sometimes known as "dark nebulae" because they are so dense with gas and dust that light cannot penetrate them. The dark cloud shown here stretches an estimated 180 light-years ...

The scientists made a computer model of the solar nebula—the disk of gas and dust from which the Sun and planets formed 4.6 billion years ago. The primordial debris included icy grains ...

Circinus West is a cold, dense cloud of gas and dust that stretches out for 180 light-years, around 60 times the size of our solar system ... Despite being a "dark nebula," the Circinus West ...