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Adventures on Wasp B76

And speaking of news, today our prompt (optional, of course) is another oldie-but-goodie: a poem based on a news article. Frankly, I understand why you might be avoiding the news lately, but this is a good opportunity to find some “weird” and poetical news stories for inspiration. A few potential candidates:

“Earth Has Acquired a Brand New Moon That’s About the Size of a Car,”

“Ohio Man Seeks World Record with Beer-Only Lent Diet”

“Pablo Escobar’s ‘Cocaine Hippos’ May Be Restoring Colombia’s Ecosystem”

“Researchers Discover Faraway Planet Where the Rain is Made of Iron”

At one hot, faraway world,
it’s always cloudy with a chance of iron rain.
the otherworldly forecast
has detected clouds full of iron droplets
This mega planet is so hot on the sunny side
that iron vaporizes in the atmosphere.
on the cooler night side of the planet,
almost certainly turning into rain.

“Like droplets of metal
falling from the sky,”
the iron rain would be extremely dense
and pack a pretty good punch,
Wasp-76b
takes less than two days
to orbit its star.

So it’s always daytime
on the star-facing side,
with clear skies.
And it’s always nighttime on the night side,
where temperatures fall to 2,700 degrees
strong wind constantly sweeps some of the
vaporized iron from the day
to night side of the planet.

As night transitions back into day,
it rains iron on the night side.
Wasp-76b and its extreme climate
is believed to remain in a gaseous state
around that entire planet,
there’s no telling whether it’s
a steady drizzle or downpour,
but you’d need a sturdy umbrella —
a dancing astronaut holds up an umbrella
in front of an orange waterfall-like deluge.

“Singin’ in the Iron Rain,
an evening on WASP-76B.”
Head there now to escape COVID-19,
and to wish Earth “get well soon!”