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night·side | \ ˈnīt-ˌsīd 
\
\Definition of nightside
: the side of a celestial body (such as the earth, the moon, or a planet) not in daylight
Examples of nightside in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web In February 2018, Becker and her team decided to take Juno’s navigation camera—which typically looks at nearby stars—and take a peek at the Jupiter’s dark nightside.
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Nora Mcgreevy, Smithsonian Magazine, "The Forecast on Jupiter Is Cloudy With a Chance of ‘Mushballs’," 10 Aug. 2020 These clouds of condensed rock block outgoing thermal radiation, making the planet's nightside appear relatively cool from space.
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Fox News, "NASA reveals secrets of 'Hot Jupiter' exoplanets," 29 Aug. 2019 Rapid winds carry this over to the nightside, where relatively cooler temperatures hover around 2,240 degrees Fahrenheit.
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Ashley Strickland, CNN, "Iron rain could be falling on this hot exoplanet," 11 Mar. 2020 As a result, the magnetic field on the dayside of our planet receives a little extra boost, while the nightside is slightly weaker.
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National Geographic, "Mars is humming. Scientists aren’t sure why.," 24 Feb. 2020 In this case, the temperature difference isn't a large one, meaning that heat likely flows from the dayside to the nightside.
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Ashley Strickland, CNN, "How hot is it? The hottest-known exoplanet is so hot it rips apart its own molecules," 28 Jan. 2020 These planets are tidally locked, so that the same side always faces the star, and depending on how much the heat gets redistributed, the dayside can be much hotter than the nightside.
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John Wenz, Ars Technica, "Lessons from scorching hot weirdo-planets," 22 Dec. 2019 These planets are tidally locked, so that the same side always faces the star, and depending on how much the heat gets redistributed, the dayside can be much hotter than the nightside.
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John Wenz, Ars Technica, "Lessons from scorching hot weirdo-planets," 22 Dec. 2019 But as those gases flow to the nightside of the planet, the hydrogen atoms are able to reconnect under the comparatively cooler conditions.
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Jennifer Leman, Popular Mechanics, "This Hot Jupiter Is So Hot Right Now," 28 Jan. 2020
See MoreThese example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'nightside.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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Time Traveler for nightside
The first known use of nightside was in 1848
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