55 Cancri e is the first alien world which has had its surface ‘mapped’ by astronomers
HELL has an address: 55 Cancri-e is the first alien planet to have some of its surface features directly observed. And it’s no tropical paradise.
For some time 55 Cancri-e has been considered ‘strange’. Some felt it may be made of diamond. Others suggested it was covered in exotic fluids.
So an international team of astronomers headed up by the University of Cambridge has examined data captured by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope about this 40-light-year distant ‘super-Earth’.
Orbiting a Sun-like star in the Cancer constellation, the astronomers observed the rocky planet through several entire orbits — each just 18 hours.
