Sunscreen Snow Found On Giant Planet Outside Of Earth’s Solar System

A digital illustration from NASA depicting the newly-discovered gaseous planet Kepler-16b and its two stars.

Astronomers have discovered an interesting feature on a red-hot, giant planet outside of our solar system. The atmosphere “snows” titanium dioxide, the active ingredient used in most brands of sunscreen. The discovery was made by a team of astronomers at Penn State who used the Hubble Telescope to identify the planet’s “sunscreen snow” phenomenon.

According to Science Daily, this is the first time that this “snow-out” or “cold trap” process has been discovered on an exoplanet, defined as a planet orbiting a star outside of our solar system. These observations will help expand researchers’ understanding of the complicated weather patterns that exist on these exo-planets and could assist in determining whether they are viable for human habitation.

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