Sunscreen 'Snow' Falls on Scorching-Hot Alien Planet

[Judi Lynn]

By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | October 27, 2017 07:10am ET

The weirdness of exoplanets continues to amaze.

It snows titanium dioxide, one of the active ingredients in sunscreen, on one giant, scorching-hot alien world, a new study suggests.

Astronomers used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to study Kepler-13Ab, a planet that's six times more massive than Jupiter and that lies 1,730 light-years from Earth. [Hubble in Pictures: Astronomers' Top Picks (Photos)]

Kepler-13Ab is very close to its host star, completing one orbit every 1.8 Earth days. As a result, the planet is one of the hottest worlds known, with a dayside temperature of nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius), researchers said. (Like many other tightly orbiting worlds, Kepler-13Ab is "tidally locked," always showing the same face to its star. So, it has a dayside and a nightside.)

More:
https://www.space.com/38581-alien-planet-sunscreen-snow-hubble-telescope.html?utm_source=notification

[SCantiGOP]

1. There must be a god

Who else would douse a 5,000 degree planet in sunscreen?

[Javaman]

2. I find this stuff so incredibly fascinating

I'm so glad to be alive in a time where we are learning more and more about ex-planets and what it's like on them.