Data from ESA’s exoplanet mission Cheops has led to the surprising revelation that an ultra-hot exoplanet that orbits its host star in less than a day is covered by reflective clouds of metal, making it the shiniest exoplanet ever found.
[ALT text: This infographic shows the host star as a big yellow circle on the left, with the shiny exoplanet orbiting as a small circle around it in white/grey. The exoplanet orbits its star in around 19 hours. In the middle of the infographic, a schematic of the interior of the exoplanet is shown, with cloud layers of silicate (glass) and titanate in grey and white. On the right, three facts about the exoplanet are shown. It has a mass 1.7 times that of Neptune and a radius 1.2 times that of Neptune. The exoplanet’s dayside temperature is around 2000 °C.]