New rocky worlds will be explored by the James Webb Space Telescope.
The telescope's scientific consortium wants to study geology on small planets from 50 light-years away. The work on the observatory will take a long time and should be finished in a few weeks.
Smaller planets are more difficult to see than gas giants because of their relative brightness next to a star. Two planets that are slightly larger than Earth should be able to be examined by the telescope.
We know that neither of these worlds is a good place to live, but we can still investigate them. The super-hot, lava-covered 55 Cancri e is one of the planets highlighted.
55 Cancri e is four percent of the distance between Mercury and the sun.
The planet has a blast furnace that is above the melting point of most rocks. Scientists assumed the planet is locked to the star and one side always faces the sun.
It rains lava at night in a process that removes heat from the atmosphere, which may be the reason for the offset heat. The nighttime lava suggests a day-night cycle that we can see on Mercury.
One team led by Renyu Hu of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will look at the planet's thermal emission for signs of an atmosphere, while the other team will look at heat emittance from the planet.
Every 11 hours, LHS 3844 b moves around its parent star. 55 Cancri e is larger than the star. The planet's surface is cooler and there is no atmosphere on it.
A team led by astronomer Laura Kreidberg at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy hope to catch a signal of the surface using spectroscopy in which different wavelength of light suggest different elements To find out if they can deduce a surface composition from the thermal emission spectrums of the planet's daylight side, 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.
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Tracking targets in the solar system, as well as 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. Sometime in June or July, the $10 billion observatory will be ready to begin its first cycle of observations.
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