The exoplanet is named LTT9779b and its size is similar to that of Neptune. Being covered in metallic clouds, reflects the80% light it receives from its host star, according to a study published today by Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Its high reflectivity makes it the largest “mirror” of the Universe known to date. In the solar system, the planet that reflects the most sunlight is Venusabout and 75%while the Tierra does it in and 30%.
The initial discovery of this planet was made in 2020 NASA’s Tess mission and several ground-based instruments such as HARPS from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile, but high-precision measurements and their monitoring were the work of the European Cheops mission. The exoplanet has a radius 4.7 times greater than the one on Earth and there a year lasts only 19 hours. On the side that faces its star, the temperature is estimated to be about 2,000 degrees.
Its greatest peculiarity is that it is covered by reflective metallic cloudsformed for the most part by silicate -the same material from which sand and glass are made- mixed with metals such as titanium.
One of the study’s authors, James Jenkis, from the Universidad Diego Portales in Chile, describes it as “a world on firenear its star, with heavy clouds of metals floating in the air, raining droplets of titanium”.