Astronomers finally detect a rocky planet with an atmosphere
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Astronomers have searched for years for rocky planets beyond our solar system with an atmosphere
But this hellish planet - apparently with a surface of molten rock - offers no hope for habitability.
Infrared observations using two instruments aboard the James Webb Space Telescope indicated the presence of a substantial
The planet, called 55 Cancri e or Janssen, is about 8.8 times more massive than Earth, with a diameter about twice that of our planet.
"Indeed, this is one of the hottest-known rocky exoplanets," said astrophysicist and study co-author Brice-Olivier Demory of the University of Bern's Center for Spac
The planet is probably tidally locked, meaning it perpetually has the same side facing its star, much like the moon does toward Earth.
That star is gravitationally bound to another star in a binary system. The other one is a red dwarf, the smallest kind of ordinary star
The distance between these companions is 1,000 times the distance between Earth and the sun, and light takes six days to get from one to the other.