A scorching hot world where metal clouds rain drops of titanium is the most reflective planet ever observed outside of our Solar System, astronomers said. This strange world, which is more than 260 light years from Earth, reflects 80 percent of the light from its host star, according to new observations from Europe\u2019s exoplanet-probing Cheops space telescope. That makes it the first exoplanet comparably shiny as Venus, which is the brightest object in our night sky other than the Moon. First discovered in 2020, the Neptune-sized planet called LTT9779b orbits its star in just 19 hours. Because it is so close, the side of the planet facing its star is a sizzling 2,000 degrees Celsius, which is considered far too hot for clouds to form. Yet LTT9779b seems to have them. \u201cIt was really a puzzle,\u201d said Vivien Parmentier, a researcher at France\u2019s Cote d\u2019Azur Observatory and co-author of a new study in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. The researchers then \u201crealised we should think about this cloud formation in the same way as condensation forming in a bathroom after a hot shower,\u201d he said in a statement. Like running hot water steams up a bathroom, a scorching stream of metal and silicate \u2013 the stuff of which glass is made \u2013 oversaturated LTT9779b\u2019s atmosphere until metallic clouds formed, he said. Surviving \u2018Neptune desert\u2019 The planet, which is around five times the size of Earth, is an outlier in other ways. The only exoplanets previously found that orbit their stars in less than 24 hours are either gas giants 10 times bigger than Earth \u2013 or rocky planets half its size. But LTT9779b lives in a region called the \u201cNeptune desert\u201d, where planets its size are not supposed to be found. \u201cIt\u2019s a planet that shouldn\u2019t exist,\u201d Parmentier said. \u201cWe expect planets like this to have their atmosphere blown away by their star, leaving behind bare rock.\u201d The planet\u2019s metallic clouds \u201cact like a mirror,\u201d reflecting away light and preventing the atmosphere from being blown away, according to the European Space Agency\u2019s Cheops project scientist Maximilian Guenther. \u201cIt\u2019s a bit like a shield, like in those old Star Trek films where they have shields around their ships,\u201d he told an international newsagency. The research marks \u201ca big milestone\u201d because it shows how a Neptune-sized planet could survive in the Neptune desert, he added. The European Space Agency\u2019s Cheops space telescope was launched into Earth\u2019s orbit in 2019 on a mission to investigate planets discovered outside our Solar System. It measured the reflectiveness of LTT9779b by comparing the light before and after the exoplanet disappeared behind its star.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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