Webb telescope finds salt clouds around “Pink Planet” GJ504b (opens in new tab)

A Northwestern University-led astronomy team used the James Webb Space Telescope to identify salt-rich clouds in the atmosphere of GJ504b, the object known as the “Pink Planet,” in findings published Thursday in The Astronomical Journal. The object orbits a sun-like star 57 light-years from Earth and was too faint for earlier ground-based efforts to analyze its light in detail. Researchers describe GJ504b, discovered in 2013, as a planetary-mass companion because it could be either a giant ex...