This hellish exoplanet's skies rain iron and create a rainbow
There are many words that could be used to describe WASP-76b — hellish, scorching, turbulent, chaotic, and even violent.
This is a planet outside the solar system that sits so close to its star it gets hot enough to vaporize lead.
This more positive descriptor was added to the list quite recently, as astronomers have detected hints of something called "glory" in the atmosphere of the ultra-hot Jupiter exoplanet
This effect is often seen over our own planet, as well as in the atmosphere of our violent neighbor Venus
If the effect is confirmed to be happening over WASP-76b, it could reveal a great deal about this strange and extreme exoplanet
There's a reason no glory has been seen before outside our Solar System – it requires very peculiar conditions
Olivier Demangeon, team leader and an astronomer at the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences in Portugal, said 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.
Discovered in 2013, WASP-76b is located just 30 million miles from its parent yellow star,
which is around 1.5 times the mass and 1.75 times the width of the sun.