Researchers believe they may have identified a set of rainbow-like colorful rings, called a glory, on a planet outside our solar system for the first time.
Just from looking at our own solar system, we can see that planets come in a wide variety of colors — from the dusty red of Mars to the bright blues of Uranus and Neptune. Planets like Jupiter have beautiful bands of color caused by variations in the atmosphere, while it’s hard to even see the surface of Venus because its atmosphere is so thick. But there are other variations in color which planets can display, like a stunning rainbow-hued set of circular rings called a glory.
“There’s a reason no glory has been seen before outside our Solar System – it requires very peculiar conditions,” said lead author of the research, Olivier Demangeon of the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço in a statement. “First, you need atmospheric particles that are close-to-perfectly spherical, completely uniform and stable enough to be observed over a long time.
Related WASP-76b is already famous as an extreme exoplanet, with an atmosphere heated to a scorching 2,000 degrees Celsius, which is so hot it rains iron there. The planet is tidally locked, meaning one side of it always faces its star and one side always faces out into space, causing a massive temperature difference between these two sides. It is also puffed up to a huge size given its mass.
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