Map: Alien Weather Report

Using infrared images recorded by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have created the first weather map of a planet outside our solar system. Only 60 light-years away in the constellation Vulpecula, planet HD 189733b is the closest known neighbor with an orbit that brings it directly between its star and Earth. The map was created from a composite of 278,528 images recorded by Spitzer’s infrared-array camera over a 33-hour stretch.