I have discovered a planet.

I have discovered a planet. It is icy, with goodly moons. Something stands there, deliberately yearning for the night.
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The spire stood there, watching, waiting. It sensed and scanned every detail of the universe--within 257 meters. Its builders had long since abandoned it, but had built in an automated purpose: every night, it would find its home in a particular part of the sky and transmit all of the information it had gathered, out into space on a powerful and invisible laser beam. There was just one problem: the sun never shifted more than a few degrees in the sky. The tidally-locked planet, occasionally perturbed by its neighbors, would slowly turn. And so waited the spire, endlessly, as the night that would never come came.

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We have discovered a planet. It is not on the maps. There's an animal there that's like a lion, with selfish teeth. When can we go?
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Dr. Holdsen had been stranded in uncharted space for months. More specifically, a smallish planet orbiting a white star. Holdsen was not an astronomer nor a navigator, but had tried to locate any of the characteristic marker stars in the sky. He figured he may have found Betelgeuse, but he couldn't be sure. He was certainly somewhere off the catalog.

He knew that winter would be approaching soon, and he knew that the winter would last a long time. He had to find some edible food, so it was a lucky thing he was a doctor of exobiology. The plants weren't toxic, but they certainly weren't nutritious either. A dead tiger-like creature, when scanned, proved that if it hadn't been decomposing for the past few days it would have made a fine meal. Holdsen just had to catch a few of those creatures for his own. He knew he was stronger than most animals on this planet, he kept up his normal space exercise routine and he did after all have a body molded to work on a planet with twice the gravity and half the atmosphere.

He took a rocket pistol, the only sidearm available, and headed out of the clearing and into the towering alien forest. He lay a trap of an inedible-to-him creature (which he had nicknamed "Piggy") and waited behind a rock. But he found he didn't have to wait long. In apparently slow motion, the alien tiger had leapt towards him, giving him just enough time to duck out of the way. The dazed felinoid stared at Holdsen and gauged the situation. Holdsen noticed its wide eyes and the many teeth, each of which seemed to writhe about in the animal's mouth. Holdsen pointed the rocket pistol at the tiger, which leapt at him again. The rocket bullet sputtered around in the thick atmosphere, barely scratching the tiger's skin.

Holdsen was now pinned down, and he drew a knife from his pocket. Just before the creature could chew his face, he stabbed its face. The animal, revolted, closed its mouth. Slowly, one by one, its teethe crawled out. They were independant organisms! With a gash over its face and no teeth, the animal ran away. Not exactly the best hunting experience.

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They have discovered a planet. It is nearby. Its skies are burnt umber dappled with rose. The smell makes me recall my home.

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I grew up in a Starfreighter. My dad was the captain actually, and he never really quite cared about safety. Engineers would often come back in from the airlock smelling like various hypergols, and I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a couple interior explosions as the result.

The first planet I ever visited was Proxima Centauri B. What a place to live. The life there naturally produces hypergols as energy storage. The red-brown sky wasn't anything like I thought it would be, and clouds of red fuming nitric acid revealed just how dangerous this place was. I barely escaped that starfreighter assignment alive.

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