Today’s forecast: cloudy with a 100% chance of iron rain in the evening
The exoplanet, WASP-76b, about 640 light-years from Earth, orbits its host star, WASP-76, once every approximately 1.8 days at the relatively small distance of only 0.03 astronomical units (AU). The Earth, in contrast, is at a distance of 1 AU from the Sun. The star, WASP-76, is somewhat larger and hotter than the Sun, but that doesn’t make much of a difference for the planet orbiting around it. At such a small distance, the planet would be damn hot no matter how big the star was. The planet, almost as massive as our Jupiter, is therefore classified as a…