Astronomers¹ using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have deduced（推理） the actual visible-light color of a planet orbiting another star 63 light-years away. If seen directly it would look like a "deep blue dot," reminiscent of（令人回忆起） Earth's color as seen from space. But that's where all comparison ends. The planet's daytime atmosphere is nearly 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit², and it possibly rains glass -- sideways -- in howling 4,500-mile-per-hour winds.

 

The cobalt blue（钴蓝色） color doesn't come from the reflection of a tropical ocean, but rather from a hazy³ blow-torched atmosphere and perhaps from high clouds laced with silicate⁴ particles. The condensation⁵ temperature of silicates⁶ could form very small drops of glass that would scatter⁷ blue light more than red light.

 

The turbulent alien world, cataloged HD 189733b, is one of the nearest exoplanets to Earth that can be seen crossing the face of its star. It has been intensively studied by Hubble and other observatories⁸, and its atmosphere is dramatically changeable and exotic.

 

The observations yield new insights into the chemical composition and cloud structure of a bizarre "hot Jupiter" class planet, which orbits precariously⁹ close to its parent star.

 

Clouds often play key roles in planetary atmospheres, and detecting the presence and importance of clouds in hot Jupiters is crucial, say researchers. "We obviously don't know much on the physics and climatology of silicate clouds, so we are exploring a new domain¹⁰ of atmospheric¹¹ physics," said team member Frederic Pont of the University of Exeter, South West England, the United Kingdom.

 

The team used Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph to measure changes in the color of light from the planet before, during, and after the passage of the planet behind the parent star. This technique is possible because the planet's orbit is tilted¹² edge-on as viewed from Earth; therefore, it routinely passes in front of and then behind the star.

 

Hubble measured a small drop in light -- about one part in 10,000 -- when the planet went behind the star, and a slight change in the color of the light, too. "We saw the light becoming less bright in the blue, but not in the green or the red. This means that the object that disappeared is blue because light was missing in the blue, but not in the red when it was hidden," said Pont.

 

The team's study will be published online July 11 and will appear in the August 1 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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