Mysterious ‘completely black’ planet is one of the darkest ever spotted

Scientists have seen one of the darkest planets ever discovered – a black, searingly hot gas giant which absorbs 99% of the light that hits it.

Researchers have compared it to charcoal, and the gas giant orbits incredibly close to its star, 466 light years from our planet.

The planet is named Wasp-104b, and is a ‘hot Jupiter’, a gas giant of a similar size to Jupiter in our solar system, but much, much closer to the star.

Most hot Jupiters are dark (and extremely, extremely hot) – but this one is far, far darker than expected.

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Researchers at Keele University say that Wasp-104B is much darker, absorbing 97 to 99% of light.

Lead author Teo Mocnik said, ‘From all the dark planets I could find in the literature, this is top five-ish. I think top three.’

The reason it’s so dark is probably down to how close it is to its planet, a yellow dwarf in the constellation Leo.

It takes just 1.75 days to do a full orbit, being just 2.6 million miles from the star – and its thick hazy atmosphere may contain atomic sodium and potassium, which absorb light.