This exoplanet looks like Earth from afar, but you wouldn't want to live there

NASA and ESA capture the true color of an exoplanet for the first time ever.

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This illustration shows HD 189733b, a huge gas giant that orbits very close to its host star HD 189733.

As it turns out, Earth isn't the only Blue Marble floating out in space. For the first time ever, a team of European and American scientists have captured the first-ever true color image of an azure blue exoplanet called HD 189773b.

While HD 189773b may resemble Earth from a distance, the surface temperature there is about 1000 degrees Celsius. Toasty.

The team of scientists were finally able to get a color-correct photo of the planet by using data from the Hubble Space Telescope to measure the light reflection off of the exoplanet.

While the blue color of Earth comes from our seas (which reflect the blue color of our sky), the scientists believe planet 63 light-years away gets its color from blue light scattering silicate particles in the atmosphere. With a surface temperature of 1000 degrees Celsius, however, the scientists are certain that it rains glass sideways in howling 7000-kilometer-per-hour winds.

So the conditions there are it's basically hot enough to form flying tornados of glass. Somehow we don't think this will be one of those habitable Exoplanets.

[ESA via Popular Science]

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