In 1992, Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail detected planets around the pulsar PSR B1257+12, a neutron star. They gave themselves away through tiny glitches in the pulsar's radio ticking. These worlds are bathed in lethal radiation and probably formed after the star exploded. Yet they were the first planets confirmed beyond the Solar System.
A large share of Earth's water molecules formed in the interstellar cloud that existed before the Sun was even born, more than 4.6 billion years ago. You are literally drinking a cosmic fossil.
By day, the Martian sky looks butterscotch because of fine dust hanging in the air. But at dusk, those same grains scatter blue light forward, creating a bluish glow around the Sun. Rovers have photographed these blue sunsets: the exact reverse of what we see on Earth.