Exoplanets articles from across Nature Portfolio

Although both are rocky planets in the habitable zone, Venus and Earth followed different climate evolutionary paths. This Perspective argues for the importance of Venus for understanding planetary habitability and terrestrial planet evolution.

Simulated close encounters between planetary systems and other stars reveal that outer giant planets on wide orbits tend to be ejected, with a fraction of them forming bound pairs. This scenario would lead to a population of free-floating binary planets in dense stellar environments

Methane emission from a very cool brown dwarf, perhaps arising from an aurora, has been detected in James Webb Space Telescope observations.

An outstanding discrepancy between observations and models of stellar limb darkening is resolved here by the inclusion of stellar surface magnetism in models. This will enable an improved characterization of transiting exoplanets.

By analysing the chemical abundance differences of pairs of co-moving stars born together, it is found that about 8% show chemical signatures that indicate ingestion of planetary material.

Spectrally and spatially resolved ALMA observations of water vapour in the inner regions of the famous planet-forming disk around HL Tauri pave the way towards an observational characterization of planet formation at the water snowline.

Brain areas work in tandem to temporarily store important information, and an aurora on a cool brown dwarf.

Astronomers spot the first planet outside the Solar System to boast a phenomenon reminiscent of a rainbow.

Kepler-1625b-I and Kepler-1708b-I are the most noteworthy exomoon candidates to date. A new analysis of the available data comes to a different conclusion.

The observed ‘radius valley’ — a dip in the distribution of exoplanet radii, which separates rocky super-Earths from larger sub-Neptunes — is at odds with current theories of planetary formation. New simulations that couple planet formation and evolution, and account for the orbital migration of planets that are largely composed of steam, are able to reproduce the valley feature.

A series of pieces published in this issue highlights the breadth and depth of topics discussed in modern astrobiology, an exciting discipline that has come to the forefront of astronomy in recent years and promises to answer one of the most fundamental questions of humanity.