One of the stalwart units of astronomy just got a makeover. The International Astronomical Union, the authority on astronomical constants, has voted unanimously to redefine the astronomical unit, the ...

The sun still shines as bright, but according to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), its precise distance from us has just changed. At a recent meeting of the IAU in Beijing, China, members ...

The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI. Without fanfare, astronomers have redefined one of the most important distances in the Solar System. The astronomical unit (au) — ...

Appearances aside, the stars are not eternal and the planets do not move with clockwork precision. For these reasons, one astronomer is proposing that his colleagues ditch the astronomical unit, or AU ...

When it comes to dealing with the cosmos, we humans like to couch things in familiar terms. When examining exoplanets, we classify them based on their similarities to the planets in our own Solar ...