Illustration of stellar light passing through the atmosphere of WASP-19b. WASP-19b is a 'hot Jupiter' exoplanet that orbits its parent star WASP-19, which is about 882 light years from Earth in the southern constellation of Vela. When the exoplanet passes in front of WASP-19, some of the starlight passes through the planet?檚 atmosphere and leaves subtle fingerprints in the light that eventually reaches Earth (yellow and red waves). Researchers using the FORS2 instrument on the Very Large Telescope analysed this light and deduced that the atmosphere contains small amounts of titanium oxide (centre, grey), water (red and white) and traces of sodium (blue) and a strongly scattering global haze (blue waves).