Some awe for a Thursday:
That nifty graph shows light from a star being blocked (so very slightly) by a planet crossing in front of it. These measurements were taken by NASA’s Webb Telescope, which is possibly the niftiest thing ever. The star is 41 light years away and is in the constellation “Octans”, which can be seen from Earth only while standing in the southern hemisphere. The planet is called LHS 457 b (was “Planet Karl Urban” already taken?), is Earth-sized, and rocky.
It wasn’t that long ago that we could only assume the existence of planets outside of our solar system but now, as of this writing, we’ve found 5,241 of them.
