Image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. #JWST

Program: 2731
Observation ID: jw02731002005_02101_00003_mirimage_o002

Instruments used: FGS, NIRCam, NIRISS, NIRSpec, MIRI

Sand clouds form every morning but clear up by nightfall on WASP-94A b, a well-studied gas giant located nearly 700 light years away from Earth.

New research using data from the #JWST is among the first to detect #cloud cycles on a Hot #Jupiter #exoplanet.

By isolating the clouds, researchers were able to more accurately measure the properties of the #planet's #atmosphere and provide one of the clearest pictures to date of the planet's composition.

Observations revealed that mornings and evenings on WASP-94A b have extremely different weather patterns: Mornings are riddled with clouds made of magnesium silicate, a common mineral found in rocks, while the evening has clear skies.

Hot Jupiter planets orbit much closer to their stars—closer even than Mercury to the sun—and therefore are much hotter and are exposed to more radiation. Because of their extreme environments, these planets also make good laboratories to study the chemistry and physics of cloud dynamics.

#astronomy #exoplanets
https://hub.jhu.edu/2026/05/21/astronomy-exoplanet-atmospheres-detecting-clouds/

Paper by Mukherjee et al. (2026):
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adx5903