Dear Dirty America

Astronomers said on Thursday that they have discovered the darkest known exoplanet they say is the size of Jupiter.

The researchers said exoplanet, TrES-2b, is blacker than coal or any planet or moon in our solar system.”TrES-2b is considerably less reflective than black acrylic paint, so it’s truly an alien world,” astronomer David Kipping of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), lead author on the paper reporting the research, said in a statement.

TrES-2b lacks reflective clouds due to its high temperature.  The planet has a temperature of over 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit and orbits its star at a distance of only three million miles.

“It’s not clear what is responsible for making this planet so extraordinarily dark,” co-author David Spiegel of Princeton University said in a statement. “However, it’s not completely pitch black. It’s so hot that it emits a faint red glow, much like a burning ember or the coils on an electric stove.”

TrES-2b orbits the star GSC 03549-02811 about 750 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Draco.