Discovered strange 'iron rain' on an exoplanet

An international team of astronomers has discovered an exoplanet far away from the Earth where strange 'iron rain' often takes place.

The Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) explained that exoplanet WASP-76b had days when its temperature exceeded 2,400 degrees Celsius, hot enough to vaporize metals. At night, however, with strong winds, cool the iron so it condenses into drops of iron that fall on the surface of this exoplanet.

The exoplanet is located 360 million light-years away from Earth, in the direction of the Pisces.

The exoplanet is located 360 million light-years away from Earth.

Notable conditions on the WASP-76b were detected by the Echelle Spectrometer and Stable Spectroscopy (ESPRESSO). The high-resolution device, which IAC is responsible for, is installed at the Southern European Observatory (VLT) in Chile.

Scientists used ESPRESSO to identify the chemical variations between night and day on WASP-76b. This is also the first time such variants have been detected in an extremely hot planet.

"Surprisingly, we didn't see this iron at dawn ," said David Ehrenreich, a researcher at the University of Geneva and the first author.

"Like the Moon orbiting the Earth, this causes extreme temperature differences between day and night on the planet," said Jonay I. González Hernández, a researcher.

Besides, according to Núria Casasayas Barris, a researcher at IAC and a graduate student at La Laguna University in Spain, identified the giant planets as the best laboratories we have to study. Harsh climate on exoplanets. With ESPRESSO, we can detect chemical changes by analyzing a small portion of the observable atmosphere.