New rocky worlds will be explored by the James Webb Space Telescope.
The telescope's scientific geology consortium has an ambitious agenda to study these small planets from 50 light-years away. The work on the new observatory will take a long time and should be finished in a few weeks.
The smaller planets are more difficult to see than gas giants because of their relative brightness next to a star. Two planets slightly larger than Earth should be able to be examined by the powerful mirror and deep-space location of the telescope.
We know that both of these worlds are not suitable for human habitation, but investigating them could still be a proving ground for future studies of planets like our own. 55 Cancri e is a planet covered in lava and lacks a substantial atmosphere.
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How the James Webb Space Telescope works in pictures is related to the live updates.
55 Cancri e is four percent of the distance between Mercury and the sun.
The planet has blast furnace surface temperatures above the melting point of most types of rocks. Scientists assumed the planet is locked to the star, meaning one side always faces the sun, although observations from NASA suggest the hottest zone might be slightly offset.
The scientists think that the offset heat is due to a thick atmosphere that can move heat around the planet, or that it rains lava at night in a process that removes heat from the atmosphere. The nighttime lava suggests a day-night cycle, which might be due to a 3:2 resonance, or three rotation for every two orbits, that we see on Mercury in our own solar system.
Two teams will test the hypotheses, one led by Renyu Hu of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the other led by a professor from Sweden.
There is only one time every 11 hours that LHS 3844 b moves around its parent star. The star is cooler than 55 Cancri e. The planet's surface is cooler than expected, and there is likely no atmosphere on it.
A team led by astronomer Laura Kreidberg at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy hopes to catch a signal of the surface using a technique called spectroscopy, in which different wavelength of light suggest different elements. To see if they can deduce a surface composition from the thermal emission spectrums, they will compare them to basalt and granite.
The two investigations will give us fantastic new perspectives on Earth-like planets in general, helping us learn what the early Earth was like when it was hot like these planets are today.
Tracking targets in the solar system and moving between hotter and colder attitudes to test the strength of its mirror and instrument alignment are some of the final procedures that are being worked on. The $10 billion observatory should be up and running around June or so.
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