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Explanation: A mere 280 light-years from Earth, tidally locked, Jupiter-sized exoplanet WASP-43b orbits its parent star once every 0.8 Earth days. That puts it about 2 million kilometers (less than 1/25th the orbital distance of Mercury) from a small, cool sun. Still, on a dayside always facing its parent star, temperatures approach a torrid 2,500 degrees F as measured at infrared wavelengths by the MIRI instrument on board the James Webb Space Telescope. In this illustration of the hot exoplanet's orbit, Webb measurements also show nightside temperatures remain above 1,000 degrees F. That suggests that strong equatorial winds circulate the...

Using NASA data and 3D modeling, Indiana University Bloomington professor Bernard Frischer and his research team have dispelled a long-held theory regarding the relationship between two famous monuments in ancient Rome. The Ara Pacis Augustae, or Altar of Augustan Peace, was built in 9 B.C.E. in ancient Rome's Campus Martius. The marble altar stood as a propagandistic celebration of the peace and prosperity ushered into the new empire by Rome's first emperor, Augustus. Near the Ara Pacis sat a 71-foot-high granite obelisk brought from Egypt by Augustus, which served as the gnomon, or pointer, of a meridian line. Following a...