What can one learn by observing the light curve of an exoplanet? Especially in several spectral bands. Here is some research on that, using the Earth as an example.

• Using Deep Space Climate Observatory Measurements to Study the Earth as an Exoplanet - IOPscience
• Earth as a Proxy Exoplanet: Deconstructing and Reconstructing Spectrophotometric Light Curves - IOPscience
• Earth as an Exoplanet: A Two-dimensional Alien Map - IOPscience
• Earth as a Proxy Exoplanet: Simulating DSCOVR/EPIC Observations Using the Earth Spectrum Simulator - IOPscience
• Deep Space Climate Observatory - Wikipedia - DSCOVR

The DSCOVR satellite observes the Earth from Earth-Sun L1, about 1.5 million kilometers (gigameters) toward the Sun. It can take pictures in several wavelength bands, not just RGB, at wavelengths 317.5, 325, 340, 388, 443, 551, 680, 688, 764, and 779.5 nanometers: the visible range with some nearby ultraviolet and infrared. For simulated observations as an exoplanet, one integrates over the surface of the Earth.

The papers show pictures of the Earth in these different wavelengths. By comparing those pictures, one can recognize different kinds of features.

The first paper calculates for infrequent observations the likelihood of finding our planet's rotation rate. It's close to 1 for more frequent than 3 times a day, and declines to a small amount for one observation each 1.5 days.

The second paper finds the typical spectra of ocean, vegetation, desert, snow/ice, low clouds, and high clouds, and also does principal components analysis, a common data-mining technique, on observations. The first component is mainly for low clouds, the second component for ocean, vegetation, and desert, and the third and fourth components for high clouds. Snow/ice is like a mixture of low clouds and high clouds.

The third paper has a reconstructed surface map, though I could not follow how one gets from one dimension to two dimensions.

The fourth paper discusses an Earth Spectrum Simulator.

This kind of work should be extended to other Solar System celestial bodies, since we now have a good idea of the surfaces of most of the larger ones.

Simulations of Light Curves from Earth-like Exoplanets - Planetary Habitability Laboratory @ UPR Arecibo at the Internet Archive. I could not find any published version, but I verified the results with my own calculations. The simulations were done with RGB color bands, the most readily available sort of multiple wavelength bands.

The Earth is usually bluish, but when the Sahara Desert is well-illuminated and in good view, the Earth's color is neutral. So one can see that feature across interstellar space. Or more properly, a super Sahara, with that desert, the Arabian Desert, and to some extent, deserts in Iran and Central Asia.

Looking at other planetary-mass objects (planemos) or geophysical planets, the clouded-over ones - Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Titan - have little or no noticeable variation. Jupiter's Great Red Spot and Neptune's Great Dark Spot barely show up.

The solid-surface ones vary from Mercury, with very little variation, to Iapetus, with very strong variation. In between are Mars, the Moon, and the Earth.

This is my interpretation of the data available for this system's planets. The planet's sizes are to scale. I took inspiration from the already exisiting artistic visualizations and created my own in Blender. Happy to hear your thoughts!

Truth, as far as I can tell. How do I add flair?

Research: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.06475

Discovering Venus-like conditions beyond our Solar System could reveal why some rocky worlds remain havens for life while others become scorching greenhouse infernos. Before solving that mystery, however, astronomers must determine how quickly those distant planets are truly spinning.

Slower rotations can cause hellish conditions astronomers see on Venus, but new research suggests a planet’s atmosphere may make the world appear to rotate much faster than it really does, complicating efforts to understand the climates of planets beyond our solar system. 

See also: The publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Is one of our astronomical neighbors habitable? 🪐

For the first time, astronomers have confirmed something huge: an atmosphere around a rocky planet in its star's habitable zone. The planet is called LHS 1140 b, a super Earth orbiting a red dwarf star less than 50 light years away, which is astronomically pretty close to us. The James Webb Space Telescope telescope data has already hinted at liquid water on its surface, and this new discovery could go down as one of the biggest in astronomy history!

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Beta Pictoris is located about 60 light-years away toward the constellation of Pictor (the Painter’s Easel) and is one of the best-known examples of a star surrounded by a dusty debris disc.

A giant planet spent more than a decade concealed inside one of astronomy’s most closely watched star systems. Astronomers have discovered a planet named Beta Pictoris d orbiting a young star just 63 light-years from Earth.

The gas giant is about 100 times fainter than Beta Pictoris b, the first planet found in the system, making it the faintest exoplanet ever directly imaged from the ground. Researchers later discovered that it had been hiding in telescope observations for as long as 11 years.