A team of astronomers detected a bizarre, ultra-hot exoplanet where temperatures can reach well above two thousand degrees Celsius. Scientists speculate that it can actually rain liquid iron there.

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An artists impression of WASP-76b, showing its night side. - Image Credit: ESO/M. Kommesser - HDR tune by Universal-Sci

The giant planet goes by the name of WASP-76b, is located at a distance of approximately 640 light-years from Earth, and is tidally locked to its host star, which means that it takes as long to rotate around its axes as it does to go around its star. The fact that it is tidally locked also means that it has a so-called day side and night side as one side always faces the star.

The colder night side remains in perpetual darkness. Temperatures on the day side get so incredibly hot (2400 degrees Celcius) that metal vaporizes, strong winds carry the vapor to the colder (1500 degrees Celcius) night side where it comes down as metal rain. David Ehrenreich led a study on the planet, which is published in the science journal Nature. He mentioned that one could say that it gets rainy in the evening on this exoplanet, except it rains iron.

In addition to being incredibly hot, the day side also showers in radiation several thousands of times more severe than Earth gets from the sun. With help from the recently completed ESPRESSO (Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanet and Stable Spectroscopic Observations) instrument at the ESO VTL in Chile astronomers also discovered that the day and night side have distinct chemistry from one another. They discovered a convincing signature of iron vapor at the so-called 'evening border' of the planet, separating the day and night sides.

Ehrenreich mentioned that to the scientists' surprise, they did not observe the iron vapor in the morning. The research team reckons that this is due to the fact that it is raining iron on the night side.

The ESPRESSO instrument is designed to search for exoplanets similar to Earth. Nonetheless, this discovery shows that is it is fit to be used for more than just that. Thanks to its outstanding stability, it is ideal for peering into exoplanet atmospheres, teaching us more about their makeup.

If you want to learn more about WASP-76b and its rather extraordinary features, be sure to check out the research paper listed below.

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