NASA's Hubble Telescope recently spotted a layer of 'sunscreen' on a distant planet. NASA officials said the telescope detected a stratosphere on a massive and blazing-hot exoplanet known as WASP-33b.

NASA scientists said the presence of stratosphere can help them get details about the formation and composition of a particular planet.

They said the atmospheric layer includes molecules that absorb ultraviolet and visible light, acting as a kind of 'sunscreen' for the planet that it surrounds.

Until now, researchers were unaware whether these molecules would be found in the atmosphere of large- hot planets located in other solar systems.

Co-author Avi Mandell, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said, "Some of these planets are so hot in their upper atmospheres, they're essentially boiling off into space. At these temperatures we don't necessarily expect to find an atmosphere that has molecules that can lead to these mutilayered structures".

As per experts, in earth's atmosphere the stratosphere lies above the troposphere, an active weather-region. The temperature in troposphere is usually warmer at the bottom and cooler at high altitudes.

On the other hand, in stratosphere, the temperature increases with altitude, a phenomenon known as temperature inversion.

In case of WASP-33b, researchers identified a temperature inversion in its atmosphere, which has about four and a half times the mass of Jupiter.

Lead author Korey Haynes said these two lines of evidence together make a very convincing case that we have detected a stratosphere on an exoplanet.

Nikku Madhudsudhan, one of the researchers, said that understanding the links between stratosphere and chemical compositions is critical to studying atmospheric processes in exoplanets.

He said the findings presented in their study marks a key breakthrough in this direction.