A planet's year length depends on its distance from the Sun. Planets closer to the Sun have shorter years. A planet's rotation speed is unrelated to its year length. Planets' orbital speeds vary ...

Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have measured the rotation rate of an extreme exoplanet by observing the varied brightness in its atmosphere. This is the first measurement of the ...

Tracking the rotation speed of solid planets, like the Earth and Mars, is a relatively simple task: Just measure the time it takes for a surface feature to roll into view again. But giant gas planets ...

There are incalculable oddities in our solar system, and myriad ways that planets are different from Earth. One surprising factor you might not have considered is how planets rotate. While we all ...

A newly analyzed planetary system has turned up a world orbiting at such a skewed angle that it defies the neat textbook picture of how planets are supposed to form and settle around their stars. The ...

The first ever exoplanets were discovered 30 years ago around a rapidly rotating star, called a pulsar. Now, astronomers have revealed that these planets may be incredibly rare. The first ever ...