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LiveScience
LiveScience
Ben Turner

James Webb telescope spots wind blowing faster than a bullet on '2-faced planet' with eternal night

An artist's concept of WASP-43b.

Scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have mapped the weather on a planet 280 light-years from Earth — a hot gas giant with one side permanently facing its sun and the other cloaked in eternal night. 

The Janus-faced planet, named WASP-43b, is composed primarily of hydrogen and helium and is significantly hotter than any gas giant in our solar system, due to its closeness to its host star, which it orbits once every 19 Earth hours. This extreme proximity means WASP-43b is also tidally locked to its star. 

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