Researchers studying the universe’s “Pink Planet” have discovered an unexpected feature in its atmosphere: clouds made of salt.A team of astronomers led by Northwestern University used the James Webb Space Telescope to discover a salty cloud atmosphere unlike anything previously observed. The findings were published Thursday in The Astronomical Journal.The so-called Pink Planet, formally known as GJ504b, was discovered in 2013 and is technically not a planet but rather a “planetary-mass companion” because it could be a giant exoplanet or a small brown dwarf orbiting a star, according to Northwestern. AdvertisementAdvertisementIt orbits a sun-like star located 57 light-years from Earth and is 550 degrees Fahrenheit, which is hot by Earth’s standards but extremely cold for a giant planet. An exoplanet is usually between 1,000 and 2,000 degrees, according to the university.”We were very surprised, because people have theorized that salt clouds might exist in the atmospheres of companions at these temperatures of, say, 500 to 700 degrees Fahrenheit, but people in general just don’t observe any kind of signatures of clouds in such temperatures, so we were very surprised,” Aneesh Baburaj, the leader of the study, told CBS News.The The planetary-mass companion is estimated to be 25 times Jupiter’s mass and between 2.5 billion and 4 billion years old, which explains its lower temperature, as giant planets cool with age, according to Baburaj, a postdoctoral associate at Northwestern’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics.Its low temperature has made it difficult for astronomers to study it from Earth, as multiple teams worldwide have tried to observe its light but have failed, Baburaj said. But with the Webb telescope, it took researchers 2 hours to conduct a successful observation.AdvertisementAdvertisementThe James Webb Space Telescope captures infrared images, which cannot be seen by the human eye, and spectra to spread light out to reveal chemical fingerprints.After capturing the Pink Planet’s faint light, researchers created a light “fi …
