When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. If you sampled the hundreds of billions of stars in any galaxy and plotted their luminosity ...

This artist’s impression shows the super-Earth exoplanet GJ 1214b passing in front of its faint red parent star. The exoplanet, orbiting a small star only 40 light-years away from us, is about 2.7 ...

Diagram of a planet (e.g. the Earth, blue) transiting in front of its host star (e.g. the sun, yellow). Left: The lower black curve shows the brightness of the star noticeably dimming over the transit ...

Many of us remember that scene in the final moments of the first Star Wars movie, when Luke flies his ship toward the surface of the Death Star in a dizzying and breathtaking swoop. “I’m going in….” ...