For the first time, astronomers map a distant planet's true, slightly egg-shaped outline

For thirty years, every planet beyond our solar system was drawn as a perfect circle, because that was all the data allowed. A Cornell-led team has now broken the simplification. Using a new technique called transmission strings on James Webb Space Telescope observations, they resolved the real, uneven outline of WASP-17b, a giant world more than 1,000 light-years away — slightly egg-shaped, one side of its atmosphere bulging further than the other, with winds racing between its permanent day and night. Published in Nature Astronomy, it is among the most complete three-dimensional views yet of any of the 6,000-plus known exoplanets.