JWST Reveals a Lopsided Alien World with Blistering Evening Winds

58 minutes ago 3

Rommie Analytics

Artist's depiction o WASP 17-b, with its egg-shaped atmosphere. Credit - Engine House and Hannah Wakeford

Typically, when we think of exoplanets, we think of neat spheres floating directly in front of their star, which acts as a giant spotlight. From our vantage point, they would look more like two perfect two dimensional circles than spheres, though. But nature is almost never so clean-cut. A new paper published in Nature Astronomy from researchers at Cornell and the University of Bristol details the first-ever study of an exoplanet that is noticeably lopsided.

Read Entire Article