Vanadium oxide and a sharp onset of cold-trapping on a giant exoplanet

The abundance of refractory elements in giant planets can provide key insights into their formation histories¹. Owing to the low temperatures of the Solar System giants, refractory elements condense below the cloud deck, limiting sensing capabilities to only highly volatile elements². Recently, ultra-hot giant exoplanets have allowed for some refractory elements to be measured, showing abundances broadly consistent with the solar nebula with titanium probably condensed out of the photosphere^3,4. Here we report precise abundance constraints of 14 major refractory elements on the ultra-hot giant planet WASP-76b that show distinct deviations from proto-solar and a sharp onset in condensation temperature. In particular, we find nickel to be enriched, a possible sign of the accretion of the core of a differentiated object during the evolution of the planet. Elements with condensation temperatures below 1,550 K otherwise closely match those of the Sun⁵ before sharply transitioning to being strongly depleted above 1,550 K, which is well explained by nightside cold-trapping. We further unambiguously detect vanadium oxide on WASP-76b, a molecule long suggested to drive atmospheric thermal inversions⁶, and also observe a global east–west asymmetry⁷ in its absorption signals. Overall, our findings indicate that giant planets have a mostly stellar-like refractory elemental content and suggest that temperature sequences of hot Jupiter spectra can show abrupt transitions wherein a mineral species is either present or completely absent if a cold trap exists below its condensation temperature⁸.