Blue planet where it rains glass, sideways
Astronomers said on Thursday they had found another blue planet a long, long way from Earth — no water world, but a scorching, hostile place where it rains glass, sideways.
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists from Nasa and its European counterpart, ESA, have for the first time determined the true colour of an exoplanet, celestial bodies which orbit stars other than our own Sun.
They concluded that HD 189733b, a gas giant 63 light-years from our own planet, was a deep cobalt blue, “reminiscent of Earth’s colour as seen from space.”
“But that’s where the similarities end,” said a statement.
This planet orbits very close to its host star and its atmosphere is heated to over 1,000ÂşC.
“It rains glass, sideways, in howling 7,000 km-per-hour winds,” said the statement.
The planet is one of the nearest exoplanets to Earth that can be seen crossing the face of its star, and has been intensively studied by Hubble and other telescopes.
“Measuring its colour is a real first — we can actually imagine what this planet would look like if we were able to look at it directly,” said Frederic Pont of the University of Exeter, who co-wrote the paper in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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