Of course the travel guide says it’s incredibly hot (2000C) on the day side and super-cold (-200C) on the night side, but it’s still the first rocky planet confirmed outside our own solar system. The planet, CoRoT-7b, orbits the star CoRoT-7 in the Monoceros, or Unicorn, constellation. The names all get more sensible when you learn the planet was detected in 2008 by the CoRoT satellite.*
Or you could just call it “the Lava Planet,” which is sexier and easier to type. Also cool: It’s so close to its sun and moving so fast that its year is 20.4 hours. So dress in layers, and hang on tight.
The Knight Science Journalism Tracker has a dry little report on how various news sources have, or have not, irresponsibly inflated the finding’s relevance to the search for alien life. There’s a good roundup of links that show the spectrum of reaction, scientific and non-.
*The satellite’s name apparently stands for COnvection, ROtation and planetary Transits, but that tips back over towards unintelligibility.
my Aggie Journalists blog? It's over 
I'm not doing these right now because my life kind of went upside down, but thank you guys for the nice comments. I left all the stuff up 
