This animated world lies more than 260 light-years from Earth and reflects 80% of the light of its host star, according to new observations from the European Khufu space telescope, which analyzes exoplanets. So LTT9779b is the first exoplanet with a brightness comparable to that of Venus – the brightest object in our sky other than the Moon.
Discovered for the first time in 2020, the Neptune-sized planet orbits its star in just 19 hours. Being so close, the side of the planet facing the star is 2,000 degrees Celsius, a temperature considered too hot for cloud formation.
However, LTT9779b appears to have it. said Vivian Parmentier, a researcher at the Côte d’Azur Observatory in France and co-author of a book Study the new planetIt was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics on Monday.
Parmentier stressed in a statement that the researchers realized they should “think of this cloud formation like the condensation that forms in a bathroom after a hot shower.”
Just as hot water condenses in a bath, a scorching flow of metal and silicate — the glass it’s made of — saturates LTT9779b’s atmosphere so saturated that mineral clouds have formed.
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