Sky News - CA (2019-11 & 2019-12)

12 SKYNEWS •NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019

located near enough to us to permit the
detection of an atmosphere. “It’s going to be
just a handful,” cautions David Charbon-
neau. “Those are the really precious ones.”
One TESS discovery, designated LHS

3844b, offers an especially appealing target,

thanks to a speedy 11-hour circuit that

keeps it within one million kilometres of

its star. Although the red dwarf is much

weaker than our Sun, LHS 3844b buzzes it

so closely, the planet’s surface temperature

is estimated to be approximately 530°C.

Laura Kreidberg, a postdoctoral re-

searcher at Harvard University, recently

tried to determine whether such a hot world

OVEN-FREEZER WORLD It takes only 11 hours

for the rocky planet LHS 3844b to orbit its red dwarf sun,

46.8 light-years from Earth. Slightly smaller than Venus, it’s close

enough to its star to be tidally “locked” so that one face is constantly

illuminated while the other (depicted here) is in perpetual darkness.

ILLUSTRATION COURTESY NASA/JPL

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