After years of searching, astronomers have finally detected an atmosphere on a rocky planet around another star.
But what a strange planet it is! 55 Cancri e seems to be blanketed in carbon dioxide gas bubbling out of a global ocean of lava. Like an image out of Dante's Inferno.
One of the great frustrations in the search for life in the universe: It's much easier to study extreme, hellish planets (huge, hot, etc) than to study the moderate worlds where life could plausibly exist.
@richard The only credit I've been able to find is the name at the bottom of the graphic. I included the full version (not the widely shared crop) for that reason.
Well that's cool! These are the shadows of the 2017 and 2024 North American solar eclipses, observed by the GOES weather satellites & superimposed on each other.
The images show the Moon's shadow at 10-minute intervals.
Our galaxy seems to be full of "rogue" planets wandering alone between the stars.
A new observation from NASA's TESS space telescope hints that these dark worlds might hugely outnumber the normal (?) planets, like Earth, that bask in the warmth and light of a sun.
Tiandu-2 is part of a lunar communications network being set up to support China's upcoming Chang’e-6 lander. It will attempt to collect the first samples from the lunar farside, launching as soon as next month.