The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) used its Spitzer Space Telescope for creating a precision temperature (exo-) map of a nearby ‘super-Earth’ exoplanet, known as 55 Cancri e. This is the first of its kind graphical representation for the heat data available for such an exoplanet, which is located at a distance of 40 light years from Earth and is situated in the constellation of Cancer.

For the first time, researchers have created this kind of a map for Cancri e that is eight times more massive than Earth. The map revealed that one half of this exoplanet consists of nearly entirely molten rocks, while the other hemisphere is nearly in the entirely solid state. Exoplanet 55 Cancri e orbits extremely close to its parent star, with one orbit taking 18 hours for completion. This has made the exoplanet tidally locked, where one half is forever facing the star and the other half is forever in darkness, creating extreme surface characteristics.

The temperature of the hemisphere facing the star rises as high as 2,500 degrees Celsius (4,500 Fahrenheit), while the dark hemisphere’s temperature is lower than 1,100 degrees Celsius (2,000 Fahrenheit). “We haven’t yet found any other planet that is this small and orbits so close to its parent star, and is relatively close to us, so 55 Cancri e offers lots of possibilities,” said lead author, Brice-Olivier Demory of the University of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory.

On 55 Cancri e, the intense temperature gradients are not prevented by its rotation, as in the case of Earth, because this exoplanet does not spin. Demory also stated that atmosphere might possibly exist on the night hemisphere of the exoplanet, while the extreme temperature conditions on the other side might have resulted in complete evaporation of the atmosphere. This implies that the heat is either not being properly transmitted or not transmitted at all from the day to the night hemisphere.