ESO have produced a press release about a Nature paper on WASP-76b. The study was led by David Ehrenreich of the Geneva Observatory, and used observations with the new ESPRESSO spectrograph on the ESO VLT.

“The ultra-hot giant exoplanet has a day side where temperatures climb above 2400 degrees Celsius, high enough to vaporise metals. Strong winds carry iron vapour to the cooler night side where it condenses into iron droplets.”

“One could say that this planet gets rainy in the evening, except it rains iron,” says Ehrenreich. “The observations show that iron vapour is abundant in the atmosphere of the hot day side of WASP-76b,” adds María Osorio, chair of the ESPRESSO science team. “A fraction of this iron is injected into the night side owing to the planet’s rotation and atmospheric winds. There, the iron encounters much cooler environments, condenses and rains down.”

ESO have produced an artist’s impression of iron rain as dusk on WASP-76b:

Artist’s impression of the night side of WASP-76b (Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser).

ESO have also produced videos of WASP-76b and its host star.

Media coverage from the press release includes The BBC, CNN, The Guardian, The Times, The Independent, the NY Times, Newsweek, NBC News, the Canadian Broadcasting Company, the Canberra Times, and others amounting to over 50 English-language articles plus coverage in German, French, Chinese, Polish, and other languages.