Astronomers report the discovery of a distant planet in the constellation of Draco that is as black as coal, or pure carbon.
Like Jupiter, TrES-2b (discovered in 2006 by the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey or TrES, hence its name) is a gas giant. However, while “our” giant planet is covered by bright clouds of ammonia, which reflect more than one third of the light from the Sun, TrES-2b only returns less than one percent of that comes from its star. And this despite the fact that orbits it at least five million km., A fraction of the average distance between Jupiter and the Sun is 778 million km. “TrES-2b is significantly less reflective than the black paint, which makes it a very strange world,” said David Kipping, of the Harvard-Smithsonian and author of the research to be published soon in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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